House of Jhereg
by Star and neko
Summary: Most days, Duo likes his business and his job. At least until the higher-ups decide to use him to prevent a war. What's an assassin to do?
1. Chapter 1

A/N: So I had a bit of a stressful day yesterday and decided I'd post this. This is the other idea that bit me in the ass and wouldn't let go. It is finished, so publishing speed is dependent on editing speed. I'm going to aim for a chapter a week (I have class and work that take precedence). There are seventeen chapters total, and points to anyone who knows why. I've been told this is what's called a fusion; basically, I wanted to see what the GW characters would do in Steven Brust's Dragaera, and I used the plot of _Jhereg_ as a basis for this story (and then turned it sideways and upside down so it's a vague resemblance at best). I highly recommend Brust's books, by the way. Ask me questions if my attempts at worldbuilding are unclear or other such Bad Things occur, and please review and tell me what you thought.

Warnings: violence, language, my attempts at politics, (eventual) shonen ai, POV changes in later chapters.

Disclaimer: I don't own anyone from GW, and I don't own the world I stuck them in this time either. Or the quotes I'm sticking at chapter beginnings.

Chapter 1

"'Welcome to my world. It's better with company.'"

Steven Brust's _Iorich_ pg. 312

I came into my office that day looking forward to doing very little actual work, since no meetings were scheduled and there was no paperwork due for at least a week, seeing as I'd fixed that Easterner's problem the day before. Well, fixed is relative; he'd basically walked his complaint right back out of the office after I nearly put a dagger-shaped hole in his head when he startled me by knocking at the door instead of clapping. Although that probably was the fastest way to teach the guy that when in a Dragaeran business, he should adhere to Dragaeran etiquette. And at least it meant I was paperwork-free for the moment.

I had just propped my legs up on my desk and was getting comfortable when someone clapped politely at the door. Figures. "Come in," I called.

Wufei opened the door and walked in. "You know Duo, desks are meant to be used for business, not as footstools," he said. Wufei had a ridiculous sense of propriety for a Jhereg. He was probably the only person who actually clapped at my door before coming in because he wanted to be polite and not because he was afraid he'd get a dagger in an unpleasant place if he startled me. I blamed it on his other-house blood; I'm pretty sure the honorable Lyorn side was responsible for the stick jammed up his ass.

Always made me wonder why he'd agreed to work with an assassin. Or work in the Organization at all, in fact, since the entire edifice happens to be based on deceit, double dealing, and dubious legality. But no matter the reason, I was glad he had agreed to work for me. Having someone around who could deal with the paperwork, red tape, and politics was nice. Not to mention he was good with a blade. And that I knew was a result of his Dzur half; that house always likes to fight.

"But it's just the right height!" I grinned quirkily at him and left my feet on the desk. I made a show of glancing at my boarded-up window as if checking the sun's height. Completely pointless, if you're curious, given the fact that I couldn't see out the window and I didn't actually need to anyway since my link to the Orb gave me the time whenever I needed it. I raised an eyebrow. "I know you didn't come in here this early to lecture me on the use of desks, 'Fei. What is it? Spill."

"You've received an…invitation." He grimaced.

I hauled my feet off the desk and sat up straight. "Based on the way you said that, I'm guessing my 'invite' involved some threats to my well-being if I don't show. And since you're in here and not sending a message with similar sentiments back, it's someone we either can't afford to offend or can't take down. Who?"

"Marevin."

"Fuck." Marevin was one of the known members of the Jhereg "council", the closest thing there was to a controlling factor in the Organization, which squarely landed him in both of the previously mentioned categories. Definitely someone I didn't want to piss off. And if I already had…that was really really bad.

"Crude, but accurate. Any idea why one of the Jhereg bosses wants to meet with you?"

I thought about it for a second. I was mid-level in the Organization and that was it; small-time territory boss and occasional assassin for the right price. I shook my head. "No. I haven't done any 'work' that would step on toes that high. Maybe he wants to hire me? I am pretty damned good." I quirked a grin at Wufei.

Wufei elected to ignore my joking and take the question at face value. "Do you actually want 'work' coming from that high up?" He raised an eyebrow.

"…Probably not." I sighed. I was good, but not that good. If a council member wanted to hire me and not someone better, it was likely because I'd be expendable after everything was over. "But I can't not show up, and Marevin's got enough clout that if he wants me on a job badly enough to bump me off if I say no, I'll have to take it."

"If we're lucky, it won't come to that." Wufei gave a half shrug. "The meeting is set for tomorrow at the Rat's Tail at noon, nonnegotiable time and place."

I winced. The Tail was a Teckla-run restaurant halfway across town and not in my territory, and one day would not be enough to set up any sort of decent security measures. Even considering that we could easily intimidate the Teckla proprietor into taking on extra "help" for the day; Teckla propensities were nice like that. "How many people can we get in there with only a day and without being obvious about it?"

Wufei sighed. "Maybe two without offending Roran; the Tail's in his territory. If this talk goes sour, running is likely to be a better option than fighting."

"So two in the restaurant." I fiddled with the end of my braid and gazed speculatively at the wall. "Fair bet Marevin's going to put up a teleport block. Also fair bet that if I need to run I'm going to be too busy trying not to get hit by something sharp and pointy to take the damn thing down myself." I half-grinned at Wufei. "Looks like I'm going to owe Trowa another favor."

Wufei looked annoyed. He never liked calling in outside help. Especially if "outside" meant not just outside my little piece of the Organization but outside the house altogether. He kept his mouth shut about it though; past experience said that I'd win the argument. "I'll go arrange for our people to be worked into the restaurant staff," he said.

I gave him a little wave as he left, already reaching for my link to the Orb and pulling power to make a mental connection. I pictured my odd Hawklord friend in my mind, green eyes, unruly bangs, tall stature, quiet presence. _"Trowa! Duo to Trowa! Come in, man! You there?"_

"_I'm here, Duo. What's going on?"_

"_Are you in the middle of something? Sorry if I disturbed you, but I've got a favor to ask."_

A tinge of humor came through the connection. _"I'm free right now. Are you going to end up owing me again? I believe you're already up to twenty-three favors."_

"_It'd be fewer if you'd actually call in at some point!" _I teased back. This was one of the reasons Trowa and I actually got on, even with our different backgrounds; a Hawk who got his head out of the clouds long enough to develop a sense of humor was rare, but Trowa had somehow managed it. He also knew about my 'work' and, for some reason, didn't mind. Go figure.

"_I'm saving them up. What do you need?"_

"_Are you free tomorrow around noon? I need someone with some skill at sorcery to play backup."_

Concern came through this time. _"Are you in trouble?"_

I frowned. _"Honestly? I'm not sure. This is mostly preventative measures. There may not be any trouble at all."_

Mental snorts sound really weird. Or maybe feel is a better word, since you don't really hear anything. _"Or there may be enough trouble to call in the Phoenix Guards. With you around, it's hard to tell. What exactly do you need me to do?"_

"_I've got a meeting of…dubious nature tomorrow. I can't refuse to go and I'm not sure going is safe. I want you on hand to break a teleport block if everything goes to hell in a handbasket so I can hopefully get out with my skin intact."_

"_And you can't do it yourself because…?"_ Fair question since teleportation was a bit of a specialty of mine.

"_If it gets to the point where I need to run, I'm likely to be too busy dodging nasty bits to concentrate that hard."_

"_Duo…"_

"_I'm serious, I can't back out of this meeting. That would be tantamount to painting a target on myself. I'm not sure if the meeting is safe or not, but it can't be worse than not going."_

"_All right. I'll help. Where and when?"_

"_Meeting's at the Rat's Tail at noon tomorrow. Know where that is?"_

"_No. Think about the location." _I concentrated on remembering what the outside of the seedy restaurant looked like, painting it like a picture in my head. It wasn't much, dark colors and similar to the surrounding buildings. Really the only marker was the signboard with the back end of a rat pictured on it. I'd always thought the thing was tacky, but at least it got the message across. _"Got it. I can teleport there when I need to. Do you want me in the restaurant or somewhere nearby?"_

"_Uh…your call. If things get ugly, it may be better if you're not in the building."_

"_But that will cause a delay if you need to call for help. I'll be in the restaurant. Based on the visual, I probably won't order anything though…"_

I laughed out loud. _"Good call. And thanks. I'll see you tomorrow then."_

"_Until tomorrow."_

I sighed as I felt his presence fade out of my mind. Psionic communications were always a bit strange−which is kind of a given, since it basically comes down to having outside thoughts stuffed into your head, even if you are cooperating with the effort−but they were especially strange if the person I was talking to was that much stronger a sorcerer than me. Trowa always made me wonder; I'd asked him before exactly how good he was, but he wouldn't give me a straight answer, so I'd dropped it. I guess just the fact that he was a Hawk should clue me in somewhat; anyone from that house is damned focused on whatever field they choose to study, and Trowa'd picked the mental arts. Talking to him always left me with an odd mental echo and the feeling that if he accidentally thought at me too hard he could break something in my brain.

Like I said, disconcerting.

Well, that was the sorcerous side of things taken care of. Wufei was in charge of the physical side. Which left me bugger all to do except think too hard about the situation and consider why the hell this guy wanted to meet with me anyway.

Was this whole meeting a plot to bump me off? Then why bother with the meeting at all when just hiring someone to jump me would be simpler and, probably, easier? And what could I have done that would annoy someone as high up in the Organization as Marevin? If I'd done 'work' on someone with political connections, the research I put into figuring out the target's background and movements guarantees I would've noticed. And there was nothing there. Politics is not my field of choice, so I tend to turn down jobs that are likely to come back and bite me in the ass if the wrong person manages to make it higher in the food chain later on.

Maybe I hadn't done anything yet but was getting close to really pissing someone off? But then, why bother to specifically have a meeting to warn me off, when I was multiple paygrades below the level this guy normally played at? Again, that was a situation where just killing me would probably be easier.

Maybe Marevin really did want to hire me. But for what? Given the aforementioned paygrade difference, he could definitely hire someone much better than me with very little extra damage to his accounts, and I do turn down political jobs. Trying to hire me would make no sense. Hell, I probably shouldn't even have been on the guy's radar as anything other than one more person indirectly sending him taxes every month. And isn't it just fun to realize one is basically insignificant in the scheme of things?

But if hiring was out, then killing me was back to being the most plausible option, and that still didn't make any more sense than hiring me did.

I thumped my head on my desk a few times. All the circular thinking was starting to give me a headache (and remind me why I much prefer tactics to strategy), so I gave up and started pulling out hardware to do a checkover in case something actually went down tomorrow. My daggers were all sharp and well-oiled, coming out of their sheathes quickly and easily. I adjusted the spring-loaded throwing dagger at my right wrist just a tad to make it easier to catch. The garrote wire at my collar was easy to access−not that I'd likely need it since that one's more of a stealth weapon, but it never hurts to be prepared−and my throwing darts were all in place and set so I couldn't accidentally poke myself…which would be bad considering what the points were coated with.

I was pretty much done with my checkover where I got that nagging feeling that I'd forgotten something…and realized someone was trying to mentally contact me. I concentrated on being receptive, and if that sounds easy you've never done it before. It took me a second or two to make contact.

"_Duo?"_

"_I'm here, Wufei. What's up?"_

"_I've got the setup for tomorrow. There will be two of our men working as busboys; that's all I could arrange."_

Damn. About what I'd expected, but still disappointing. _"It'll have to work; Trowa's on board, so if everything goes to Deathsgate I should be able to scamper."_

"_I don't like this." _Wufei sounded annoyed.

"_Neither do I. Mainly because I have no choice about doing it. You coming back anytime soon?"_

"_No. I'm going to stay here a bit longer and see if I can't figure out any other ways to make this meeting more secure."_

"_Good luck." _I sighed and glanced around my office space._ "I think I'm going to call it a day; I'm not going to get anything else useful done hanging around here."_

"_Fine. Watch your back. It would be just your luck to get yourself killed today and make all this preparation moot."_ I knew Wufei was worried since he wasn't ragging on me about ditching work before noon.

"_Got it. Be careful nosing around."_

"_As if I need the warning," _he grumbled as he vanished from my mind.

That last rejoinder made me grin a bit as I stood up and stretched in one movement and then headed out of my office and down to the street. Wufei was right; doing stupid stuff was always more my job than his. Probably why I was the one in charge. You never go far in the Jhereg house without grit, guts, and the willingness to take chances. All the truly profitable businesses are part of the Organization, and generally profit is directly proportional to danger level. Running a small area like I did as my official job would net a decent amount of cash, but it wasn't without risks. The biggest earning shops I had charge of were the ones with illegal gambling, smuggling, and other dubious activities taking place in the back rooms; if my area ever got truly looked at by the Phoenix Guards I was in serious trouble. But the empire's peacemakers always have much better things to do than check up on one obscure member of a house of outcasts…plus if the guards in the area investigated me they'd lose the places where they could gamble without worrying about taxes. Hey, soldiers need time off too.

With the right people bribed, Phoenix Guards weren't that big of a worry. The larger risks come from the Jhereg house itself. I'd gotten my little area to run when the former boss of a much larger area took a walk off his roof. The official verdict was suicide. The unofficial verdict was that the guy had had assistance off the roof of an unwelcome kind. That guy had caught too much attention and annoyed the wrong people; to avoid a similar fate, I was making a point of running my little businesses well and under the radar, not trying to expand but also not letting anyone else push me around. Back when I was first new I'd had to smack a few heads together to keep other people from biting little bits off the edges of my territory, but now that I was better established I was mostly letting business run itself while I monitored it and took a decent chunk out of its accumulated earnings. No one had bothered me in a while, although it was honestly fairly likely that my business prowess had less to do with their inaction than other rumors did.

Inevitably, when someone takes on 'work', there are rumors. The word 'work,' complete with emphasis, has a different connotation to a Jhereg than to anyone else; in this house, to the right people, it translates as assassination. I was one of those people. My dinky little businesses were fine and dandy, but most of my earnings came from occasional contracts to bump someone off because they'd annoyed, injured, threatened, etc, someone else. The why of things was never too much my business; I was offered a contract, and I either took it or not. And that is why I was running the show and not Wufei; he might be good with a sword, but to really get a "don't mess with me" reputation around here, that isn't enough. Plus he'd never have made enough cash on his own to stay afloat. Of the seventeen houses in the Empire, the Jhereg house is the most cutthroat, but once you know the rules and how to play, it's survivable.

Unfortunately, this little upcoming meeting was a bit outside the rules. And outside the rules or not, I still had to play.

I sighed and booted my wandering thoughts to the back of my head since they were going nowhere. Right now, I needed something else to do with my time. I could go home, relax some, possibly chuck sharp pointy objects at a target on the wall to work off tension, maybe try to finish that history by Paarfi of Roundwood that I'd been meaning to get around to... Actually, that last wasn't a bad idea; trying to detangle Paarfi's syntax was always a pain (which was why I hadn't finished the damn book yet) so I'd have to concentrate a fair amount to manage any headway.

Mostly I needed to do something besides sit and stew, which was what I'd end up doing if I stayed in the office. There really wasn't anything going on that day anyway; my being in the office was mostly a formality. If anyone really needed me they could contact me psychically.

I'd reached the door on the first floor of the building my office was in without getting waylaid by any of my support staff (hey, someone has to deal with the basic day-to-day stuff, and I'd rather it wasn't me), so I opened it, did a quick scan to make sure it was safe, and walked out the required five feet to get outside the permanent teleport block on the building. Now that I was able to, I concentrated on the street outside my home apartment, pulled power through my connection to the Imperial Orb, and let the teleport take effect.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Since I'll be very busy for the next while, I figured I'd post this now while I have a minute. If you like what you read (or if you don't and want to give me your opinion) drop me a line, critique is nice. To anyone who's actually read Steven Brust (tips hat to the reviewer who is awesome for knowing what the hell I'm talking about), I feel like I should apologize a bit. I didn't have access to all of my books writing this, and _Iorich_ hadn't come out for the first half, which makes some of the geography interesting...and totally made up. Such is life. Mostly I just wanted to play with the house system and magic rules anyway. By the way, after reading this chapter and then rereading chapter one, my beta found several lines in chapter one really really funny. It wasn't intentional, but darned if she wasn't right.

Warnings: Ditto chapter one, plus there is an OC in here. I hate making up OCs, so he's more of a plot point than anything else (which is probably bad from a writing standpoint, but still true).

Disclaimer: still not my characters, not my world, and not my quote.

Chapter 2

"The sneer, walking up…, met the smirk coming down"

Steven Brust's _To Reign in Hell_ pg. 44

I did go into my office the next morning, just on the off chance something had actually happened that I needed to pay attention to, like a sudden crisis at one of my businesses or someone unscheduled looking to start up in my territory. Nothing big ever came up, but I did eventually get to spend a few minutes directing the assistant who brought the situation to my attention (I think his name was Gorvan…or maybe Goran; something like that) about the correct actions to take after a customer in my territory had been mugged. Basically, reimburse the victim and find the offender and cause him damage. Petty though it may have been in the overall scheme of things, it broke up the monotony and the worrying for a bit.

And it temporarily stopped my repeated use of the wall just to the left of the door as a target for thrown knives.

I've never sat still well. Probably a bit of a holdover from the part of my childhood where every moment had to be used to scrape and scramble in the streets for what I could get in order to survive another day. Come to think of it, that same part of my childhood is probably also responsible for whatever it is I've got that lets me kill people in cold blood and not care. And isn't that a depressing thought?

It didn't help my fidgeting any that Wufei never came in, so I couldn't gripe at him to distract myself. I considered trying to reach him psionically, but decided if he hadn't called me then he was probably still trying to make my afternoon meeting less dangerous, and depending on where exactly he was, my interrupting him to chat could be hazardous to his health.

The guy definitely had issues with following his own advice; he'd tell me to be careful, and then go do really dangerous stuff on my behalf, usually without telling me first. Actually, the not-telling might've been payback for me not telling him in advance about some of the stupid things I would go and do. But the dangerous stuff to help me out, that was all Wufei. I was pretty sure by then that that was his entire method of telling me that we were really good friends, since when he first started working for me, although he'd save my life if it was in danger and he was there to help, he wouldn't go out of his way to make sure I wasn't in danger in the first place. Just coming out and saying that we were friends was too rude and forward though, so he had to go show it through his actions.

It was actually really nice to know someone did care; I don't exactly have that many close friends. Not that I'd ever tell Wufei that; it would be too rude and forward. Instead I'd just do my best to keep him alive too. Bonus points if I managed it by doing stupid stuff without telling him in advance.

About a quarter hour before noon, I retrieved all my knives from the now-badly-damaged wall next to the door (it was about time to call someone in to resurface it again), walked downstairs and outside the building, and teleported myself to the street the Rat's Tail was located on.

Upon arrival, I did a quick check around the street for unpleasant surprises. Nothing. Same old grungy street with a few houses and shops on it and one seedy restaurant, and no one obviously suspicious lurking in the vicinity. Not really much clientele either, just the usual not-terribly-well-off few people wandering around looking for lunch. A few were headed for the Tail, a few were headed for the street vendors selling dubious meat pastries, and a few looked like they were debating whether it would be worth it to spend a bit more money and go elsewhere to find something actually edible.

I walked into the restaurant, still scanning for danger, and took a table off towards the back right. After a moment of deliberation, I went ahead and put my back to the wall and not the door. A move that blatantly untrusting may piss Marevin off, but he was the one who'd called for a meeting with little ol' me with only a day's warning. He could suck it up.

I ordered klava to drink and sat back to wait. I managed to spot one of my two guys in the restaurant bussing tables, but not the other. That wasn't a bad thing, since it likely meant Marevin wouldn't spot him either. I wasn't sure if he'd recognize the guy I knew or not (and even if he did, he'd probably politely ignore him), but being less offensive when possible is generally a good idea. Keeps me alive for longer.

I didn't see Trowa; I couldn't decide if that was good or bad.

Five minutes after the hour, I was still nursing my single cup of klava (it was bad enough that I wasn't going to risk finishing it and having to order another) when I saw a tall Dragaeran walk in the front door; it had to be Marevin. I hadn't known in advance what he looked like, but no one else would've been in this area, at this time, with what was obviously a pair of bodyguards at his shoulder. I gave him a quick once-over. Like I said, tall, even for a Dragaeran, putting him at closer to eight feet than seven, with the lack of defining house characteristics that was common to the Jhereg. Black hair and dangerous eyes, wearing Jhereg black and grey. Definitely not someone that I wanted after my head. Hopefully, my head wasn't what had inspired this meeting and I'd get out with it still intact.

Marevin walked right up to my table and sat down without asking who I was. I would've been surprised, but I'm a tad obvious to the people who know what I look like, what with the ass-long braid and the fact that I am _not_ tall for a Dragaeran. In fact, I'm downright short, which has been annoying me for ages; it's hard to be intimidating when you're a good foot or more shorter than the person you're trying to intimidate. I usually fix this problem using sharp pointy objects, but it would be nice if I didn't need them.

I had a nice, fuzzy moment to notice that the bodyguards were well trained enough to stay just out of earshot but still in seriously intimidating range before Marevin spoke. He sure didn't waste any time. "We've heard that you do 'work'."

I managed to keep my surprise at the outright bluntness off my face. Did he actually want to hire me? That could be really really bad. But still better than him wanting to kill me, so... "I don't get mixed up in that kind of thing," I replied carefully. Outright admitting to murder isn't a really smart idea, given the fact that it's illegal and all. "I know someone who does."

"And you can get in touch with this person for us." Not a question, and interesting that he seemed to be speaking for the entire council. Either that or using the royal plural; ego tends to be directly proportional to importance of position around here, so I wasn't ruling it out. "We have a rather…unconventional job that needs doing. And you, Duo, have a reputation for managing unconventional jobs well."

Interesting again. Maybe there actually was a legitimate reason to hire me beyond being able to bump me off afterwards. I was cautiously optimistic. "My 'friend' is good at odd jobs. And I can talk to him for you." I wasn't going to ask about the target yet, because that would commit me, and I still wasn't sure this was safe.

Marevin folded his arms on the table in such a way that each of his hands was near his opposite wrist. I noticed because I'd been doing the same thing since he came in; it nicely put my hands in such a position as to be able to quickly pull a dagger or two out of my sleeves at short notice. "Your friend will be well paid. And," he kept a level stare aimed at my face, "I'm afraid, has no chance to actually turn this offer down." The corner of his mouth twitched up in a sardonic smirk.

Well, fuck. I really had nothing to say to that; the only reason I was here to begin with was that this guy could back up his threats. As I'd told Wufei yesterday, if he wanted me on the job my only options were to cooperate or become dead. And I wasn't ready to die yet. At least not permanently; done the temporary, not much fun, not looking for a repeat.

"The target is in need of protection, not termination," Marevin continued in that same calm, level voice. Well, now I had something to say, but sat on it because profanity was probably not a good idea at the moment. "It is imperative to the entire Jhereg house that she survive."

I was now officially pissed. Assassination is a business like any other; you ask to hire someone, they say yes or no. If it's yes, details are given; if it's no, you leave them alone. And telling an assassin to protect someone? I wanted to know who the hell had even come up with that idea so I could go have them committed. This kind of thing just wasn't _done_.

I decided to screw discretion and all that fun stuff and try to get some answers. There was no point in trying not to commit myself since I'd been declared committed already by the smirking idiot in front of me. "If I don't have a choice anyway, you might as well tell me the details. Who, what, when, where, and why?" I glared. "And the 'why' includes 'why me?' too."

"The simplest part first." Marevin leaned in and dropped his voice to an even quieter tone than we'd already been using. "The Empress."

_This_ time I went ahead and cursed. Inventively. The bodyguard types twitched until they realized I wasn't going to do anything physical. Then they looked like they were taking mental notes.

Marevin just leaned back and waited until I ran down. "As I said, this is vital to the entire house. A Jhereg has decided to attempt to remove the Empress. There is a fairly good chance this person will succeed, and if a Jhereg kills the Empress, the entire house will be destroyed in the backlash. Your job is to intercept any assassination attempts and eliminate all threats. The exact timing of any attacks is unknown, but it should be soon, within the month. The location and number of people involved are unknown as well; however, we suspect the public audiences will be the most unguarded and thus the likeliest place for the attack to occur, and the instigator of this affair has the resources to hire other assassins, although he does 'work' himself as well.

"As for why you…" He raised an eyebrow and smirked again. "As I said before, you have a reputation for being successful at unconventional endeavors. You also have the ability to keep your mouth closed when you need to."

Jeez, find interesting ways to pull off one or two jobs deemed impossible and get labeled as a creative thinker forever. Was it really my fault no one had tried rigging a spell to a trip wire before? I raised an eyebrow back, searching for flaws in his logic. "The Empress has her own guards. Why not just notify them anonymously but so that it's obvious the tipoff comes from a Jhereg? Then if the assassination succeeds, the house can say it gave decent warning and the Phoenix Guards are at fault." With any luck, I could still get out of this. …

"A message would likely make things worse, as it would leave the Guards with proof that the Jhereg knew in advance about the assassination attempt," Marevin said in a tone that I'd call patronizing. "The other houses would never trust that the Jhereg were not cooperating the entire time. As soon as the Empress died, the Dzur would attack out of rage and bravado. The Dragons would follow out of loyalty and bloodlust. That is most of the Imperial Army, and the rest would follow them in as soon as the first casualties occurred."

Ouch. He was right. Someone would definitely go off on the Jhereg, the Jhereg would hit back, and we'd have a repeat of the Dragon-Jhereg war−only this time with all, or at least most, of the houses involved instead of just the Dragon and the Jhereg.

I was screwed.

"I'm not a nursemaid. How the hell am I supposed to protect someone?" I glared. Since physical threats were out, it was pretty much the only way beyond tone of voice that I had of getting across how Not Happy I was with this situation, and if I was stuck with this then I was going to express my opinion about it, gods damn it all.

"Think about what you would do if killing the target was your goal. Then think of what could thwart those efforts…and do it," he said in a tone so smooth it implied the conclusion was obvious. "Who understands the mind of an assassin better than another assassin?" Marevin smiled, eyes closed to slits, and I was sure then even if I hadn't been before that he'd done 'work' in the past.

Marevin gave me a minute to think up more objections and continued when I couldn't. "You will be paid well, as I said. Sixty thousand Imperials."

That was nice, very nice, but money means bugger all if you're dead. Although if I hadn't known he was serious before, I would now; that was a good thirty times the normal assassination fee.

I thought the situation through some more and gave up completely. I could poke no obvious holes in the logic being thrown at me, and the possibilities for cooperating were better than not. If he was wrong about the assassin or the Phoenix Guards caught the guy, I got paid for doing nothing. If he was right and I succeeded, I got paid and saved the house. If he was right and I failed, I got paid and it wouldn't matter because with all the other houses dogpiling on the Jhereg there's basically no way little ol' me would survive. Or I could try to turn him down and die either here and now, or if I got out of the restaurant, die very shortly after. So fuck it. Nothing else to do.

I was still pissed, though.

I half-sighed, half-growled. "Morganti?" I asked. Normally I don't like dealing with weapons that destroy a person's soul, but in this case I'd call it justified, since if whoever was causing this problem was willing to destroy the entire Jhereg house.

"Unrevivifiable. Morganti would be a nice bonus."

"Who is the assassin?" My not-my-target target.

He paused for a second. "His name is Zechs." Marevin signaled to one of his bodyguards, and the man came forward and handed him a file, which he then slid across to me. "This is what we know about the 'work' he's done in the past; we are hoping that you can read through this and find a way to anticipate his actions enough to take him out."

I gave it a quick look. There was a decent amount of information in there, all on prior assassinations; hopefully, it would be enough to work with and I'd get this over with as quickly as possible.

When I closed the folder, Marevin pushed his chair back and stood up. "You know that this must remain a secret. And if you try to cut and run…I suggest you investigate the alley behind this restaurant when you leave. What you find there should be sufficiently motivating." And he turned and left, bodyguards falling into step as he passed by them.

I stayed frozen for a minute, feeling panic clawing behind my eyes, replacing my smoldering anger with dread. Assuming Marevin was threatening my life, which was the obvious conclusion given that reneging on a contract after accepting is one of the things in the Organization that isn't tolerated, the implication in that last statement was he'd already killed someone as an example.

And I hadn't seen Wufei since yesterday.

I got up as calmly as I could and walked purposefully and unsteadily towards the kitchen of the Tail. The staff, instead of trying to keep me out, simply let me through. Coupled with the fact that no one had tried to come to the table and serve Marevin, I was now pretty damn certain that this entire meeting, start to finish, had been planned out. The place, the time, the ultimatum, the warning. All my concentration leveled on making my way out the door and finding what had been left for me.

The kitchen door let out into the back alley. I scanned the area. The crumbling brick of the walls was noted and ignored. Movement caught my eye momentarily for the second it took to identify the scurrying rats and ignore them as well. There was a pile of trash on the right, left for the Teckla cleaning crew to remove. Ignore.

There was a lump of cloth on the left. Closer investigation made it a body. I knelt down and turned Wufei over, checking for wounds. Single shot, heart. Revivifiable if there was no spell on him preventing it, since he'd only been dead since yesterday.

The sound of the door to the alley reopening sent me spinning around with a snarl on my face and a dagger in each hand. I lowered the daggers when Trowa walked out with his hands up in a placating gesture, but couldn't get the rage out of my eyes or the grimace off my face. Trowa approached, crouched, and held one hand over Wufei's body. "There's no spell to prevent revivification. I could heal him now if I were able to."

I took a deep breath to calm down and sheathed my weapons. "I have a sorceress from the Bitch Patrol on payroll. If she can't bring him back, I'll get someone else who can. I need to get him to the office." I reached down and lifted Wufei's torso off the ground.

Trowa put his hand on my shoulder. "You're too unbalanced to do the teleport. Let me."

I started to object and then stopped. He was right. I was too angry and upset. Most likely if I tried I just wouldn't be able to concentrate enough on the destination to make anything happen. There was also a slim possibility of a bad sorcery accident if I could concentrate just enough to make the wrong thing happen, and those were usually unique and very, very bad. I could and did stay calm enough to teleport myself out of life-or-death situations on a regular basis, but that was a risk only to myself.

No one touches my friends. Not and gets away with it. When all this shit was over, Marevin and I were going to have a reckoning, council member or not.

"Get us out of here," I growled at Trowa. He raised a hand and the alley dissolved around us, fading into the street in front of my office.

With Trowa's help, I managed to get Wufei into the building. As soon as she got a good look at the situation, the woman running the flowershop that was the front for my office made psionic contact with someone and gave some orders. By the time I got Wufei flat on the floor and Trowa managed to shut the door, a middle-aged Jhereg woman had emerged from the back of the shop. She promptly shoved me out of the way and healed Wufei's chest wound. Strain showed on her features as she concentrated, holding her hands over Wufei's head and heart. A minute later, he started breathing again.

I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding and relaxed minutely. The sorceress nodded and stepped back as Wufei's eyes flickered open, going from surprised to confused to understanding to pissed off in about two seconds flat. "Ow," he croaked out.

I grinned in relief and relaxed the rest of the way. "I thought I told you to be careful nosing around," I said.

I noticed absently as the sorceress bowed and exited back the way she'd come in, and I made a mental note to give her a bonus later. The Left Hand of the Jhereg may be female-dominated and caustic (hence the nickname the Bitch Patrol) but you got what you paid for with them. In this case, competence and the ability to perform revivifications. Revivification was expensive, and chancy at the best of times since it comes with a bunch of restrictions such as requiring that the dead person be dead for less than three days, but I consider it worth the cost. As I said before, I'm rather attached to both my friends and my skin.

I've spent some time in the past seeing the nice flash of light right before you wake up, and so has Wufei. I'm actually not sure which side of the situation it's worse to be on: not knowing if the other person is going to wake up, or not knowing if you are. Fortunately, so far the two of us have managed to avoid being at the same time. If that ever happens, I'm not sure if there's anyone around I'd actually expect to work to bring us back. Except for maybe Trowa, but since he's not in the house, he'd probably find out too late to do anything.

"I was being careful." Wufei levered himself up, then accepted the glass of water Trowa handed him and took several small sips. I quietly ignored the shaking of his hands and spared a moment to wonder where Trowa'd gotten the water from. "I take it I was an example?"

"However did you guess?" Fading adrenaline makes me sarcastic.

Wufei snorted. "Perhaps the fact that I woke up again. I was hit by a spell from behind while investigating the alley in back of the Rat's Tail. I don't remember anything after that. What day is it?"

"Day of the meeting. After the meeting." Wufei cursed. I grinned sympathetically and made a show of looking around the area. Flowers, display cases, front counter, no customers, door with the sign flipped to 'Closed' and when had that happened anyway? "Do you think you're up to climbing some stairs so we can get out of the entryway here and let this place open up again? I think we've caused enough new rumors, what with the coming in with a dead body and all."

"Yes." He carefully levered himself up off the floor and stayed standing for a few seconds before walking toward the stairs. I followed close behind so I could catch him if it looked like he was going to fall on his ass, and I motioned Trowa to follow behind me.

It took twice as long as usual to get all the way up the stairs and down the hallway into the office, but eventually we managed it. My office is not on the top floor, which would be inviting trouble since it would mean fairly easy access from the roof, but it is on the second floor from the top. Which means, since it's a four story building, three flights of stairs. I shoved Wufei into a chair as soon as we got in the door, and it was a mark of how tired he was that he didn't complain and just sat. Being dead really takes it out of a person.

Wufei blinked as he finally noticed Trowa had come up with us. "Why is he still here?"

"Because we still need to talk," I answered. "Finding you in the alley kind of killed any follow-through I had planned." I turned to Trowa and leaned back against the side of my desk. "I didn't actually see you in the restaurant. How much did you hear?"

"Most of it. I was at the next table over. You didn't see me because I was projecting unimportance." Trowa reached into his jacket and pulled out the folder Marevin had handed me. "I think you may need this."

"Damn, I just left it sitting there, didn't I? Shit." I shook my head and took the thing from him.

"What is it?" Wufei wanted to know.

"Information on my not-my-target objective." And then I spent the next few minutes explaining what I'd been told by Marevin.

Wufei snitched the information folder from me and flipped through it while I was talking. "To borrow your usual words Duo, are you fucking serious? The Jhereg council is paying you to protect the _Empress?_ And from an assassin who has obviously worked for them in the past?"

I blinked. "Worked for them? You can tell?"

"Educated guessing, but based on what I know about some of these jobs…take this one, for instance." He opened to a specific page, and both Trowa and I shifted so we could see what was on it. "Varel was threatening to go to the Empire about 'work' her partner had done. I know for a fact that the order to make her dead came from the top. A few others are like that as well."

"Well, shit," I said. I ran a hand through my bangs. "Another thing Marevin never told me was why this Zechs is targeting the Empress anyway. Obviously the order's not coming from the council, but who else has the funds to hire someone to do 'work' on a target that high profile?"

"Does it have to be someone in the Jhereg house?" Trowa asked quietly.

"No one in the Organization would take 'work' from someone outside the house," Wufei said flatly. "It's not done."

I thought about it for a second. "No one should be that stupid. But someone dumb enough to agree to try for the Empress−which is a really good way to get killed, by the way−might actually be that stupid." I reached over and snitched the file back from Wufei. "All the information in here is on 'work' Zechs has done. I need more information. What's he look like, where's his home base, what makes him so stupid or desperate he's willing to take on a job that'll get him killed."

I walked back over to my desk and sat on it. "Wufei, info-getting is your job. Trowa, sorry about getting you involved in this. I honestly though the worst that could happen was someone trying to kill me, not being forcibly involved in a plot to kill the Empress. Or not kill the Empress. You may just want to forget everything you heard in the last"−quick check of the Orb−"two hours or so."

Trowa cocked his head at me and half smiled. "Officially, I have heard nothing. If, however, I happen to be in the vicinity of the Empress in the near future, it is entirely coincidental. It will also be coincidental if I happen to send you information that may or may not help with the things I did not overhear."

I laughed. "You do that."

"What are you going to be doing while Trowa forgets things and I dig through records?" Wufei asked.

I grimaced. "I get the boring job; I'll be shadowing the Empress."


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: And at the end of a very hectic week, I shall post again! This chapter is my first attempt at getting in Heero's head instead of Duo's, since I need to be there for some of the plot. Let me know how I did? Or if I amused you at all? Or if I confused you at all? Or if you were here and bothered to read the whole chapter? Reviews actually do make me post faster, because they remind me that I have a fic that I need to keep working on.

Warnings: Heero POV for this chapter. Ditto chapter one's warnings. And in retrospect, I probably should have mentioned what my pairings actually are (if anyone hasn't figured it out yet by reading my other stuff): 1+2. And I was aiming for 3+4, but the two of them were uncooperative, so it didn't really happen.

Disclaimer: not my characters, not my world, not my quote.

Chapter 3

"'Peace is the goal of war'"

Steven Brust's _Dragon_ pg. 204

Boring. That was the only way to describe the open court the Empress held. I resisted tugging at my guard uniform, since that would be improper under the circumstances, and continued to stare impassively out into the mass of humanity in front of me.

I was stationed to the front left of the throne the Empress Relena was currently conducting her audiences from. The intention was that I would intercept any attack before it could reach the Empress and take care of the threat. In practice, no one was suicidal enough to target the most important woman in the Empire. Besides me, there were three other guards stationed on the throne dais, two of those flanking Relena herself, and two others at each exit. And even if an assassin got past the guards, the Orb circling the Empress' head would protect its master.

Bored.

Entering the Phoenix Guards was virtually expected of Dragonlords of the lesser noble houses, and I was beginning to regret following expectation. Glory, war, and true battles had never materialized; I was stuck with guard duty.

Even worse, I was stuck with guarding Relena. My hands tightened automatically at the thought. For the gods knew what reason, the Empress had decided she liked having me in her personal entourage. Which was eminently frustrating, since as long as I was attached to the Empress I was unable to patrol the city or take on another job with the potential to actually have something happen. Instead I was required to stand around all day, continuously scanning the crowds for suspicious action, and generally finding nothing interesting at all to look at.

Fortunately, the audience for today was ending.

As Relena stood to give her closing speech, I continued to watch the room. Even if my job was boring, I still intended to do it to the best of my ability. The crowd was mostly Teckla. Some Teckla farmers were petitioning for better prices for their crops. Others wanted simply to see the Empress or came with their friends for moral support. And probably to give the speakers more courage.

There was a Yendi overtly petitioning for research funding; her true objective, however, was anyone's guess. I made sure I marked her location; Yendi are truly and dangerously unpredictable.

I watched an Athyra as well. The Orb should be capable of shielding the Empress from any sorcery directed at her, but I would prefer not to test that claim.

Tiassa discussing ideas with each other and members of other houses, Hawks looking for other bright minds to talk to, Orca prowling around for more shipping and trading rights.

The Lyorn who were recording the events of the audience registered on the periphery of my attention but no closer. They were a known quantity, although if any made threatening movements my attention would be there immediately.

I would expect little trouble from any Dragons or Dzur in the room, mostly because those two houses made up the majority of the Phoenix Guards. Any house member making an attempt on the Empress would likely be fighting either family or friends. Possible, but extremely unlikely.

After years of being on guard duty, I no longer listened to what the Empress was saying, but still paid enough attention to her tone to know when she was wrapping up. I came to full attention as Relena finished her speech, then turned with my fellow guards and followed her as she climbed down off the raised platform the throne was on and left the room via a door behind the platform.

With two guards walking in front of her and two of us walking behind as a rear guard, Relena made her way through the halls to her own private chambers. Once there, she promptly turned with her back to the door and said, "Thank you all for your vigilance today. I'd like some time alone for now, and I should be safe in my chambers. One guard should be sufficient; Heero, you remain." She smiled at me. "The rest of you are dismissed."

Dammit.

Relena retired to her chamber and I started staring at the hallway, watching the retreating backs of my fellow guardsmen. I was annoyed that I had been singled out to guard, but not terribly surprised; one guard was really all that was needed on the Empress' rooms. Sorcery protected all the windows and doors, even the one I was guarding, and the Orb would defend the Empress in an emergency situation. I was just there to be added insurance and keep a human element in the protections. Sorcery was a very effective tool, but it was always easier to take a spell down than it was to put it up. Of course, given the sheer amount of power and time spent on the spells guarding the Empress' rooms, "easier" was relative.

At that point, it was early evening, which meant I was on door-guarding duty until the Empress decided she wanted dinner and went to the dining hall. Or, if she chose to eat in her room, until I was relieved by the changing of the guard. In six hours.

_Dammit._

During the first hour, two Lyorn and three Teckla walked by. Midway through the second hour, a fourth Teckla came to the door with a tray carrying food. I did the usual sorcerous check for poisons, discreetly also inspecting the maid to make sure she wasn't a threat either, then let her into the room and entered behind her. I stood guard as Relena quietly and daintily ate her roasted kethna in cream sauce, and then when the Empress smiled and declared herself full, escorted the Teckla maid back out again with the dirty dishes.

And then stared at the hallway some more. The very least the decorators could do was put a few pictures in this hallway. Blank stone is not terribly interesting. Or perhaps someone had thought the guards should not be distracted while doing their duty. If that was the reasoning behind the monotony of this particular hallway, I was quite willing to find whoever came up with the idea and challenge them to a duel. Someone else could revivify them afterwards.

Four hours of nothing happening later, my replacement, another Dragonlord, arrived. We saluted each other and he took over my position while I gratefully took off for somewhere more interesting. Or at least less boring.

After standing still for so long, I decided to walk the palace gardens for a bit to stretch my legs before retrieving my own very late dinner from the kitchens. While making my way through the stone hallways and downstairs towards the nearest outside exit, I reflected that the Empress had probably never realized that whoever was guarding her door was guarding it straight through the dinner hour and long past. It wasn't terribly surprising; non-military personal rarely paid attention to the length and timing of guard shifts. If a guard were assigned to Relena's door who hadn't been on court duty, they would be able to eat dinner about two hours earlier than normal. But for some reason, she kept requesting me, which meant I didn't get to eat until about four hours later than normal since I was guarding the open court for the entire afternoon.

I'd learned to eat filling lunches.

I gave a quiet snort as I walked through an arched doorway out of the palace structure and into the corner of a nicely manicured garden courtyard. "Courtyard" being the builder's name for the area, given shape and construction. I thought the name was inaccurate because it suggested the garden was small. It wasn't. And in addition to size it had been structured in such a way that carefully placed bushes blocked any straight line of sight, making it seem even larger.

I inhaled the fresh air and stretched slowly, feeling several vertebrae pop back into place and shifting the broadsword slung across my back and the gold half-cloak on top of it into a slightly different position. I sighed and started walking.

It was dark, since there were only a few hours left until the middle of the night, but I didn't bother with a light spell. After staring at one corridor for so long, the amount of concentration I had to use in order to not walk off the path and into a bush was a refreshing change.

I walked quietly by habit as I wandered through the ornamental paths. Which turned out to be a good thing, because otherwise I would probably not have heard the muted sounds of a scuffle.

I immediately crouched and moved quietly towards the noise. It was probable I was overhearing a Teckla lovers' quarrel or some other similar nonsense, but the courtyard I was in lay alongside the Empress' suite of rooms. Any suspicious circumstances required investigation.

I slid between two tall bushes carefully trimmed into perfect rectangles and glanced around the corner. Two figures were in the open space beyond, both crouched close to the ground. The light was too low to truly see, but from body shapes I was fairly certain they were both male. Which didn't necessarily rule out a lover's quarrel, but made it much less likely.

As I watched, one figure fell to the ground in a boneless way that made me certain he was no longer among the living while the second figure straightened from a crouch and sheathed a knife up his right sleeve. The part of my brain that made calculations of the sort noted that the sheathing mechanism he had was spring-loaded and not cross-hand draw.

The rest of my thoughts were concentrated on what action to take.

A quick scan of the area proved there were no further intruders, so I concentrated for a second to pull power from the Orb and threw up a quick teleport block, then stepped around the corner, drawing my sword in the same motion, and activated a light spell. I squinted my eyes against the glare and studied the scene in front of me.

The fallen man, and it was a man, was definitely dead. The cast of his features under the black hood he was wearing made him likely a Jhereg. A Jhereg, dressed fully in black, sneaking around outside the Empress' rooms. A chill ran up my spine. Perhaps the interminable hall guard duty was more needed than I'd thought. And perhaps it would be a good idea to post a guard outside the window.

The other figure was dressed in Teckla brown, green, and yellow, but was obviously, from the circumstances, no Teckla. At my arrival he'd snapped the dagger I'd already seen out of its sheathe again, and made a second one appear from somewhere else in his off hand. His face was mostly shadowed under a hood as well, and from what was visible I could not see any definite house characteristics. About all I could see was a pair of glittering violet eyes. Circumstances made it highly likely he was another Jhereg. Perhaps an assassin having a disagreement with his partner.

"_Daavor!" _I called as strongly as I could. He was the guard who'd replaced me at Relena's door; he couldn't leave his post, but I didn't know who else was close enough to help.

"_Heero?"_

"_Two intruders in the garden, approximately four rooms east of the Empress' quarters! Contact someone else and send them to help; I'll keep the intruders here as long as I can!"_

A burst of understanding and acceptance and Daavor dropped out of contact. I pointed my sword at the living man. "Who are you and why are you here?" I asked in a flat voice.

His eyes flicked left and right, searching for an exit. He'd obviously realized there was a teleport block up. If he was smart, he would stay put; the area we were in was almost an alcove. The side he was on was all thick bushes. Getting through them, if it were possible, would take him longer than it would take me to close the distance between us and strike. And my movement into the area had put me between him and the paths that led to other parts of the garden.

Apparently he was smart. His eyes came back to me and he calmly seemed to come to a decision. "I'm not an enemy," he said. "That man was an assassin sent to kill the Empress." He nodded to the body on the ground and I glanced down at it and back up again.

"Sent by whom? And how do you know?" I pressed, skepticism in my tone.

"I can't answer the first question." He sucked a breath in through his teeth. "I was sent to protect the Empress, that's how I know."

"By whom?"

"I can't answer that."

Another minute or so and more guards would arrive. "You may as well tell me now. The Imperial Questioners will find the answers in any case."

He snorted. "Last I checked, saving the Empress' life wasn't a crime."

"Murder is." Neither of us looked at the body on the ground this time. "As is being in restricted parts of the Imperial Palace."

"Self-defense isn't. And who says I didn't get lost?"

I raised an eyebrow.

The man sighed, straightened from his fighter's crouch, and resheathed both his blades. Both daggers were spring-loaded forearm sheathes, I absently noted as I blinked in startlement. I still had a naked sword drawn on this man and he'd put away his weapons!

"Like I said, I'm not an enemy. And I'm sorry, but I can't stay here." My eyes widened as I felt my teleport block shatter. That's why he'd been so calm, I mentally cursed. He'd only half been paying attention to our conversation. Most of his concentration had been turned to breaking through the block I'd thrown up before. I lunged forward, attempting to close the distance quickly enough to kill him before he got away.

I was just a second too slow, as in one movement he stepped back and gestured and was gone.

I swore a few blistering oaths as several more Phoenix Guards pounded into the area too late to make any difference.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: And to think I was actually trying to keep my chapter lengths consistent. Hah, as if. One more update before I get killed by classwork for the week. Also, please please review. I'm getting people alerting this without reviewing, and although that's flattering, I really want to know what you liked about the story enough to alert it. Next chapter should be slightly more interesting than this one, and will probably make its presence known next weekend unless I get a ton of people begging me to take the time to put it up earlier (shameless plug). Oh, and since I forgot to say this earlier: I abhor grammar and spelling errors. If you find any, please tell me so I can fix them.

Warnings: Back to Duo, but beyond that pretty much ditto previous stuff.

Disclaimer: not my characters, not my world, and I really wish it was my quote because I like this one a lot.

Chapter 4

"'I hate it when my plan goes blooey, even when the results come out okay.'"

Steven Brust's _Iorich_ pg. 299

I materialized in front of a randomly chosen bar in the downtown area, mentally cursing my head off. Outwardly, I acted like I was just another person on my way home from a long day of work as I started walking in a roundabout fashion designed to confuse the hell out of my trail.

Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit! One week of nothing at all happening and I'd been getting optimistic. Although not sloppy; that would have been bad.

I ducked into a back alley, wove through two more, dodged a few drunks, and came out going back the way I'd come only on a different street.

My reasoning had been pretty simple. I was an assassin. I wasn't the best, but I wasn't bad at all. From the information I'd been given on Zechs' prior 'work', he wasn't that much better than I was. He certainly wasn't Mario, which made it all the stranger he'd agreed to try to take out the Empress since Mario was the only person who'd ever succeeded at killing an Emperor. But anyway, I figured if I could shadow the Empress he, or anyone he'd hired, would be able to as well, and if she went somewhere I couldn't follow, he wouldn't be able to get there either. Stealth and quick escapes are specialties of mine, and this job had stealth written all over it.

One week of open court and I was about ready to start something myself just for a change of pace. The whole damned production was the same thing day after day after day. Court opened mid-morning four of the five days a week, broke once for lunch, once for supper, and then adjourned shortly before the dinner hour. The only break in the monotony was the non-court day, which I got to spend wandering around the palace in the same general area as the Empress trying to look busy. Less boring, but also no fun. Court days, I just hung out in the crowd, dressed in the colors of some house I didn't belong to, and watched.

I don't particularly look like I belong to any specific house. This can work for me, since anyone who sees me kind of figures I'm in a different house and therefore I'm not their problem, especially if I make a point of avoiding wearing any kind of house colors. That would have been too suspicious in the palace, so I'd just been alternating houses. Today I'd been a Tecka.

And completely had my cover blown.

I changed directions via another set of alleys and crossed a bridge, casually dropping the dagger I'd used to kill the other assassin into the water as I passed by; I'd been carrying the thing long enough that a witch might be able to track it back to me if the Empire thought of checking that (although they probably wouldn't; most Dragaerans are pure sorcery fanatics and ignore witchcraft completely), plus by that point it was going to be easier to get a new dagger than try to clean the blood I hadn't managed to get off the blade out of the sheathe.

I'd been lucky tonight. I knew there was a guard on the inner door to the Empress' rooms, so I'd been watching the outside and seen the assassin as he snuck into the garden area before he saw me. Neither of us had wanted to be discovered, so when I jumped him the fight was short and quiet and I'd been the better knife fighter. Although it'd been a bit closer than I'd like; his dagger had been about an inch from my ribs when I'd managed to nail him through the eye.

It was luck as well that I'd managed that; I'd had to leave the body behind, and if he'd been revivifiable, the Imperial Questioners could have gotten information out of him. No assassin will turn in his contractor willingly−it's against the rules−but forced mind probes make keeping secrets a bit difficult.

I decided I'd gone in circles enough and stepped into the shadows long enough to teleport to the street outside my office.

I'd been third time lucky tonight since I'd had my hood up the entire evening. That guard may have gotten a look at my face, but it wouldn't have been a good one and my hair was currently stuffed down the back of my shirt. I hated doing that, it was uncomfortable and restricted my head movement, but it's the price I paid for having long hair. My braid was an obvious personal trademark, and since I liked being alive I kept it out of sight while on jobs.

And I'd been totally unlucky tonight because I'd been seen. And this was far from over.

I walked through the door into the flowershop and up the back stairs. Wufei was right where I'd expected him to be, sitting at his desk in the room in front of my office, doing paperwork.

Damn paperwork.

Wufei's office was in front of mine for security reasons; his idea, not mine, actually. I hadn't argued because it made sense. I was the one who killed people for a living, after all, so any pissed off survivors, relatives, Jhereg house uppers, etc. would be looking for me, not him. Wufei would play distraction for a bit while I escaped out the boarded up window in my office, which was spelled six ways from next Farmday so no one could use it as an entrance, and Wufei would slip out at some point because no one was actually after him. At least that was the general idea; this current job was breaking the rules in so many ways the damn things were confetti at this point.

Wufei looked up in surprise and frowned as I walked in. "You're back early; what happened?"

"A string of wonderful lucky breaks followed by one gods-be-damned piece of bad luck that just might invalidate the rest. Fuck." I collapsed on the extra chair sitting in front of Wufei's desk; he'd finally brought the thing in one day when he'd gotten tired of me sitting on his desk whenever I wandered in to talk to him. I was hitting the tired phase; wandering around to lose any tails had calmed me from the ready-to-kill-someone pissed-off attitude I'd had into more of a gods-damn-it-why-me viewpoint, and the adrenaline from having someone nearly kill me was wearing off.

"I can't help if you don't get to the point," Wufei said sardonically.

"I got seen. Right after I took out someone else in the Empress' garden." I banged my head on the desk. "The guard who found me threw up a teleport block, and a damn good one." My voice was muffled since I was talking into a desk, but still understandable. "I had to keep him talking long enough to take it down…"

Wufei snorted. "And since you were occupied breaking the block, you were not able to come up with any convincing ways of dodging the truth. Or lying. I don't understand your aversion to that, given circumstances."

"Got it in one. And I like being trustworthy, thank you very much. The good luck bits of tonight involved me having my hood up the whole time and the other guy being totally unrevivifiable. Dammit, now they're going to be on guard!" I hauled my head off the desk so I could glare to better effect. Good glares shouldn't be wasted. "That'll make it that much harder for me to tail the Empress!"

"It will make it that much harder for any other assassin as well."

"Yeah, but now, any opening for one assassin's going to be just that−an opening for a single assassin. And there are going to be openings still, they can't help that. Anyone can be assassinated…otherwise I'd be out of business." I sat back in my chair and sighed once, then rolled my shoulders and straightened up again. "Okay, complaining done. Now on to solving the problem."

Wufei snorted, but by this point in our working relationship, he was pretty used to my moods. Sometimes, just bitching about something lets me shove it back into perspective…or at least out of my face enough to work with the damn thing. Occasionally I've caught him goading me into bitching just so I get it over and done with sooner. I'd get annoyed over being manipulated, except usually it works.

I pulled a throwing dagger out of one of my wrist sheathes and started flipping it. "So…from what I could see, the guy I killed doesn't match Zechs's description, and since I managed to catch him flat-footed in the garden, he's not even middle-rate, just a sneak-and-stab type. The underlying problem is still out there. We've got a basic idea of Zechs's modus operandi, but that's pretty much useless since we just proved conclusively that there are likely to be other assassins too, whose modus operandi we _don't_ know. Have you gotten any further with researching Zechs?"

"Nothing new since I managed to get that description of him. I still can't track down any current or former locations."

"Dammit. I can't just lurk around the palace anymore; they'll have added more sorcery alarms and extra guards. I'm going to have to test for holes in the defenses, without setting them off, and somehow keep watch on all the problem spots at once…or trap them myself…hmmm." I didn't realize I'd stopped fiddling with the dagger and was staring off into space until Wufei cleared his throat. "Uh, sorry." I grinned repentantly and resumed flipping my dagger. "Mostly I think I'm going to have to go look at what they do now before I can figure out what to do about it."

"What about increased danger to you? You were spotted," Wufei pointed out.

"Um. Like I said, I did have my hood up. I was thinking about that earlier, and I'm pretty sure as long as I don't run into that exact same guard and let him get a good look at my face I'm okay. No one else saw me and I didn't leave anything behind, so there's nothing to trace."

Wufei just kind of looked at me. "Your voice may be a giveaway too."

I winced. "Probably." Any competent guard would have stored any discernable information about me right off the bat, including tone of voice.

"What exactly did you say to the guard?"

I fidgeted. "Well, I was trying to distract him and make him think he had me trapped, and I had to keep it simple since I was multitasking. What I said basically boils down to, 'I was sent to protect the Empress and the guy I killed was sent to assassinate her'."

"Did you have to use the word 'assassinate'?" Wufei shook his head. "Never mind, stupid question. And did he actually believe what you told him?"

"I have no idea, but it kept him standing there long enough for me to break his teleport block. Speaking of, it was a damn good thing he was distracted; that wasn't a bad block, and he had to have thrown it up quickly."

"You mentioned that already," Wufei pointed out dryly. "You seem impressed."

"Oh, shut up." I flipped the dagger into the wall next to his head.

"Very nice." Wufei rolled his eyes. "You know, it's too bad you can't do any delegating on this one."

"Too much of a security risk. And even if I trusted someone enough to ask them for help, I kind of doubt the boys upstairs would be happy with that. And unhappy boys upstairs leads to a dead Duo." I shoved back my chair and stood. "I need to go home and get some sleep. There's no point in going back to the Palace tonight, it'll still be full of people running around like idiots. No self-respecting assassin would touch the area, too much chance of being caught by accident. Open court tomorrow is a good enough time to slip back in." I stopped and frowned. "Or at least there should be court tomorrow. Do you think they'll cancel it because the Empress was almost attacked?"

"You are actually going back."

I blinked as I looked over at Wufei, who was staring at me. "Well, yeah, I kind of have to; job and all."

"Sometimes, I think you have no self-preservation instincts at all." He shook his head again. I tended to cause that reaction a lot. "No, they probably will not cancel the court. In fact, it is likely that no one outside the Phoenix Guards will be told about the attack. They won't want to alarm the public."

"Oh joy. Damn politicians." I snorted. "God forbid they alarm the public."

"Goodnight, Duo." Wufei headed me off before I got started. Information cover-ups in the name of public good really piss me off. I decided to play along and headed back down the stairs to the flowershop. I grabbed a lily on my way by, just because, and slid out the door. Wufei would lock it when he left; until then, it just stayed unlocked. We could probably leave it unlocked all the time, since anyone stupid enough to mess with my office would shortly find him or herself dead, but why invite trespassers?

When I'd cleared the teleport blocked area, I concentrated on my flat and teleported myself into my living room. Unlike the office, there was no point in having a block up here to prevent people from teleporting in. It's an unspoken rule of the Organization that no one gets assassinated while at home. Anywhere else is fair game, including work or friends' homes (well, except for if the friend is a Dragonlord, but that's for completely different reasons; Dragons don't take well to having guests assassinated−as in, 'start a war' not well).

But my home was safe for me, and I ditched my clothing and concealed weapons with a relieved sigh, folding things neatly since untangling sharp pointy objects from a messy pile is not a fun thing to do, and fell into bed. I'd been missing my bed, a nice, well-worn four poster with black sheets that I'd been using for so long there was pretty much a dent the shape of my body in the middle of the mattress, since for the last week I'd either been spending all thirty hours of my day at the palace and catnapping when possible in odd places or, if I was sure the Empress was safe, spending a few hours snoozing at my office between planning and information sharing sessions. Luckily food, at least, was easy to find around the palace. There was always a catered event going on somewhere, and it was fairly easy to sneak in, eat a meal, and sneak back out with no one the wiser.

I snuggled down in the covers. As much as tonight had gone to hell, at least it had gotten me a few hours of R&R, and I'd be thankful for that, I decided as I drifted off.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Weekend! Woohoo! Anyway, here's chapter 5, and I'll probably spit 6 out tomorrow if I don't end up too busy. This one's back to Heero's POV. My question to you all this chapter is, what do people think of the quotes at the beginning of the chapters? It's not something I've done before, and I'm curious if it's working, if it's not working, if no one cares, or what else. Drop a review and let me know, and let me know what you think of the story itself.

Disclaimer: not my characters, not my world, not my quote.

Chapter 5

"'Until there is peace, you haven't won…until there is peace, you also haven't lost.'"

Steven Brust's _Dragon_ pg. 204

By the time I was done being debriefed for the fifth time, I was in an extremely bad mood. It was easily past midnight and I had told my story first to my immediate superior, then to his superior, and so on. The only real piece of luck was that no one wanted to wake the Empress, so I had not had the dubious pleasure of being personally commended for doing what was, in my opinion, basically nothing. One assassin was unrevivifiably dead when I arrived, and the other got away. I had failed, not succeeded, and I was tired of retelling the same story over and over.

Unfortunately, it was basically guaranteed that someone would inform the Empress when she rose for the day, and she would call for me then. And probably insist that I be her personal bodyguard even more often than usual. Just thinking about it was giving me a headache.

And I'd never had a chance to eat dinner.

At this point, breakfast was closer than dinner and I was more tired than hungry anyway, so as I saluted and left the captain's office I turned toward my private rooms.

It took me nearly another three quarters of an hour to cross from the section of the palace I started in, the wing with offices and meeting rooms, to the barracks area. If I had been able to walk in a straight line, it would have taken no more than fifteen minutes. However, it was very likely that the same person who had designed the garden that had been the starting location for this whole mess had also had a hand in designing the corridors for the palace.

Corridors in the palace ran in straight lines and intersected with other corridors just as they should, but did not necessarily manage it in the most efficient manner for getting from place to place. And don't even ask about the stairs. The organization served to keep the military offices separate from but still connected to the political offices which were separate from but still connected to various rooms for visitors and so on. But it made going straight from one location to another an exercise in political understanding and not directional sense. Maybe some Issola nobles with more politeness than common sense had helped with the design.

Although the layout did have some interesting consequences. New recruits in the Phoenix Guards learned their way around quickly, since any attempt to ask for directions usually ended with the recruit on the opposite side of the palace from where he or she started, looking for a nonexistent staircase or room. I had never found myself in that particular position for the simple reason that I had never asked directions; I'd simply wandered around until I knew where everything important was located. I'd decided wandering around like an idiot once was preferable to looking like a panicked idiot repeatedly when bad directions made me late to whatever meeting I was being called to.

Eccentric design aside, I eventually made it to the hallway where my room was located. The Phoenix Guards may call the area the barracks, but only for historical reasons. After the Interregnum when the palace was set up in Adrilankha, no actual barracks was built. And when the guard expanded beyond what could easily be housed in the originally available rooms, some sorcerer decided to show off and just build an entire new wing of the palace.

I wasn't going to complain. My room might be small, but I valued my privacy. I turned the knob and opened the door. My hand automatically went up to the hilt of my sword as I registered the presence of another person. I relaxed and stepped inside as I realized it was just Quatre.

He smiled at me, remaining seated on the chair at my desk since I'd told him flat-out last time he stood up for me just to be polite that I thought that much formality between friends was just plain stupid. "You've caused quite a stir."

I snorted and moved to hang my sword and gold half-cloak on the post next to the door. "Not intentionally. Is it public knowledge already?"

"No, but by tomorrow it will be."

"Dammit." I scowled.

"Look on the bright side, if you're on duty guarding the Empress, no one will be able to speak with you."

"They'll just stare instead."

Quatre shrugged. "I thought you would prefer that."

"I do. But it isn't much of an improvement."

"True enough. But about this stir you've caused…is it true that the assassin got away?" The blond had that politely interested look of his on. Fortunately, I knew him well enough to be able to tell he was honestly interested. With an Issola it can be hard to tell sometimes. I'd asked once and Quatre said it bothered him some that people couldn't always tell if he was actually engaged in the topic of conversation, but not that much. He said the people he cared about could all tell.

I snorted as I sat down on the bed. "It's true and it's not true. We have one dead assassin, unrevivifiable, and one live assassin that escaped. Broke through my teleport block in less than two minutes." I shook my head remembering.

Quatre's eyebrows rose. "He must be good, then. At least you finished one of them."

I smirked a bit. "Good to know the gossip hasn't gotten that far yet. I didn't. The other assassin did." My smirk vanished. "And then he claimed he was hired to protect the Empress." I glared at the wall.

"Interesting," Quatre said slowly.

"Try 'annoying.' Either he was lying, which is most likely, or he has information about an assassination plot, which should be taken to the proper authorities," I growled.

"And you're mad because you're worried about future attacks on the Empress and the man who got away has information that you don't have."

I blinked. "How the hell do you do that?" I hadn't gotten all of that worked out yet, and it was my head.

This time he grinned. "Practice. Keep in mind I've known you for a while."

I got up and started pacing. "If he was lying, then he has likely been hired to kill the Empress as well and we have a loose assassin. If he was not lying, then the presence of one party trying to kill the Empress and another trying to save her makes a conspiracy of some sort more likely. A conspiracy means there is someone at the head, staying out of the direct line of fire and directing from the shadows. Extremely dangerous and difficult to deal with if we don't know who is behind it or their motivation. Either scenario will lead to future attacks, likely without forewarning." I stopped and leaned on the nearest wall. "The only link we have to anything is the assassin who got away, and I never even got a good look at him. He had his hood up the entire time."

"You said he talked to you. Can the Empire's sorcerers do a trace based on voice?"

"No. They say it isn't a good enough indicator."

"What about sorcerers _not_ in the Empire's employ?"

Now that suggestion startled me. I opened my mouth to say something, then shut it again. I thought about it for a minute. "I don't know. I've never heard of a sorcerer who can find someone based on a voice pattern, and I've spoken with more than a few. I don't think it is possible."

Quatre sighed. "Well, there goes a nice theory."

"I don't think it's possible, but I can still try. I know someone I can contact to ask." I snorted and shoved myself off the wall to walk over and sit down on the bed. "He's probably still awake right now as well; Hawklords keep odd hours."

Quatre perked up. "I'm interested now too. Why don't you go ahead and contact him?" He quirked a half-smile. "I'll go be politely interested in the bookshelf for a few minutes." Anyone who claims Issola are too polite to have a sense of humor has never spent any time talking to Quatre. Or is just dense.

I concentrated on the memory of my Hawklord friend. It was a bit strange to realize that he and Quatre had never met, but it made sense. I'd mostly talked to Trowa about Phoenix Guard business when I needed an expert psionicist's help, and so I'd been on duty most times I'd contacted him.

"_Heero."_ Trowa's voice came across the connection clearly.

"_Trowa. I hope I didn't disturb you."_

"_Not particularly. Did you need something?"_

"_Can you find someone based on a memory of a voice pattern? Or do you know someone who can?"_

"_No. Guard business again?"_

Damn. And since I had bothered him at this time of night, I owed him an explanation. Trowa had proved himself trustworthy in the past, so I didn't really mind._ "Yes. An intruder in the palace escaped and all I have is a voice."_

"_An intruder? If you care enough to call me now, the Empress must have been in danger."_

"_He was obviously an assassin, but the situation is a bit more tangled than that. There was a second assassin. Unfortunately, he became dead before I arrived."_

"_Hmm." _I blinked as the mental hum buzzed through my head. It was an odd feeling. _"And if you manage to find the intruder who escaped, what will you do?"_

"_Arrest him."_

"_Why?"_

"_Because he killed someone!" _I felt that answer was obvious.

"_But if you had been the one to confront the assassin after the Empress, you would have killed him yourself. What makes this different?"_

"_You know something," _I said flatly.

"_I am a Hawklord. I know many things. And you have not answered my question."_

Experience told me Trowa would not be sidetracked until I had answered. _"If I had been the one to kill the assassin, it would have been in defense of the Empress, and it would have been my duty. Civilians killing each other is a threat to public peace."_

"_You have a voice memory. That means you talked to the intruder who got away."_

"_Yes."_

"_And he said?"_

"…_That he was hired to protect the Empress."_

"_And you don't believe him?"_

"_He ran away!"_

"_And you would have stayed with someone hostile there?"_

"…" I didn't really have a response for that. For one, it was difficult to try to put myself in the shoes of an assassin. I willingly took a job in the Phoenix Guards to uphold the law, trying to imagine breaking it was nearly impossible. And if I did try to imagine…I had to admit I may have run myself. If the man had stayed, he would have been arrested. And the law had little flexibility as far as murder was concerned when the one dead was unrevivifiable.

Trowa's voice broke into my thoughts. _"If he was telling the truth, and you find him, what will you do?"_

I gave up and just went along. _"I don't know. Talk to him, try to find out what he knows. If he wasn't lying, and you're implying that is the case although I'm not sure how you would know," _I sent a pulse of annoyance at Trowa and received amusement in return, _"then he may not be a threat. And," _I admitted grudgingly, _"I may owe him for saving the Empress."_

"_Then I may be able to get you two in touch."_

I know my eyes widened. Quatre quirked an eyebrow from where he'd been poking through my books. _"How, by Deathsgate…?"_

"_That is a story for another time. For now, it's late. I will contact the…intruder who escaped, and see if he is agreeable to meet with you. You do realize, if he does agree the meeting likely won't be in your favor."_

"_If all of this conspiracy business is true and he means no harm, I can live with that."_

"_You also realize you can't tell any of your superiors or fellow Guardsmen."_

I sighed, and felt it carry over into the mental conversation. _"I don't like it. But can live with that too, if it's the only way to do this."_

"_Give me until a decent time today then. Normal people are not awake at this hour. You need sleep too."_

I gave a mental snort. _"And you expect me to sleep now?"_

"_Yes."_

"_Aren't you helpful." _I was only half being sarcastic. _"Trowa…thank you."_

"_Any time. This situation is beginning to seem like a bad play anyway. Perhaps I can untangle it a bit. Now go get some sleep. Knowing you, you're on duty tomorrow."_

"_You're not wrong." _I felt one side of my mouth turn up. _"Good night, Trowa."_

"_Good night, Heero. You'll hear from me later."_

Trowa faded from my mind, and I looked back at Quatre. "The bad news is, your idea won't work."

"And the good news?"

"Apparently, Trowa knows the assassin."

Quatre quirked an eyebrow at me. "You must be more tired than you thought. You wouldn't have given me his name otherwise."

I thought about that for a second. "I probably am. I have been awake for about 26 hours now. And it would explain why I'm taking this so calmly," I said.

"So your Hawklord friend knows an assassin. Should you be worried?" Quatre asked.

I shook my head. "No. I've worked with Trowa enough to know he would not hire someone to kill. And," I added wryly, "he's the one we call in when our sorcerers can't do anything. If he did want to kill someone, he could quite easily make it untraceable."

"Then if he knows the assassin, will he help you arrest him?"

I felt I owed Quatre some answers too, since he'd made the suggestion of contacting Trowa in the first place. I also thought I should have someone else examine my logic, especially since, as Quatre had pointed out, I was tired. I hadn't meant to give Trowa's name, although I didn't think Quatre knowing it was a problem. He was discreet. "No. From what Trowa said, he is certain for some reason that the assassin was telling the truth about protecting the Empress. He wants me to meet with him, alone."

"And you agreed?"

"Yes."

"Are you insane?" he asked conversationally.

"No. Trowa's specialty is psionics. If he trusts someone, he's usually right. If he actually knows the man I saw in the garden and says he was telling the truth, I am inclined to believe him," I explained. "If this keeps the Empress safe, I'm willing to go along with it."

"This is an assassin we're talking about. Do you have any reason to believe meeting him will be safe for you?"

"No, but he knows what's going on, and I need to know."

Quatre shifted the book in his hands. "What about backup?"

"I won't be able to bring any. If this person is honest, this meeting needs to be built on trust."

"You _are _absolutely insane, you know." He stood up and slid the book he'd pulled out back onto the shelf. "Right now, you need sleep. You're not thinking straight."

"Quatre." I stopped him as he reached for the door. "I need your word that you won't talk about this to anyone."

"You have it, of course." He smiled politely, as always. "That doesn't mean I won't try to talk you into telling someone else. You need backup, no matter how good of a swordsman you are."

"Objection noted."

"Then I'll leave you to your rest," he said and slipped out the door.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Slightly later than I intended to get this up, but I managed it anyway, so ha. I love messing with Duo. Please R&R.

Disclaimer: don't own the characters, the world, or the quote.

Chapter 6

"'That sounded like it should have made sense.'"

Steven Brust's _Iorich_ pg. 107

I'd figured out I was dreaming as soon as I found myself kissing a rather attractive blue-eyed man. Since it was a fun dream, I decided to go with it. Unfortunately, just when things were getting good I started to feel like I'd forgotten something important and woke up with the realization that someone was trying to talk to me.

I groaned out loud. "_Whoever this is, it'd better be good!"_

"_Hello to you too, Duo. Bad time?" _He sounded amused, the bastard.

"_Could have been better." _A quick time check put it at about the eighth hour of the morning, which meant I hadn't quite gotten as much sleep as I wanted, but I could still function. Although the frustration from my interrupted dream was making me cranky._ What's this about, Trowa?"_

"_You had a few difficulties at the palace last night didn't you?"_

I dropped my head back against my pillow. _"How in the hell do you find these things out?"_ I asked conversationally.

"_I have ways. So you ran into another assassin and then a guard."_

"_Unfortunately, yeah, and one right after the other too. Does this conversation have a point?"_

"_Would you like some help with this protection job of yours?"_

"_Uh…what?"_

"_That guardsman you ran into happens to be a friend of mine. And he asked if I could find someone based on a voice."_

That raised interesting, and scary, possibilities. _"_Can_ you do that?"_

"_No. I'd need a face at least."_

I let out a relieved breath. _"Oh good. And this is relevant…how?"_

"_Heero wants to talk to you."_

"_Heero being the guardsman?" _I asked incredulously.

"_Yes."_

"_And _what _by Deathsgate, makes you think that's a good idea?"_

"_Heero is an honorable man, and completely dedicated to protecting the Empress. He feels he owes you for defending her, and he can help you."_

I tried to come up with a polite way of saying 'you're nuts' and couldn't. _"You're nuts. He's a guardsman. I'm an assassin. This does not mix."_

Trowa sounded amused again. I was beginning to wonder if he'd been born without his ability to be rattled. _"As I said, he feels like he owes you. I asked if he'd be willing to meet with you and if he'd keep it quiet and he said yes. His honor prevents him from going back on his word."_

"_You told him you know me?" _Outrage had me up and standing in seconds.

"_I trust him."_

"_You…" _For once, someone had me tongue-tied for a minute. I smacked a palm into my face. _"Well, fuck. And you wouldn't say that unless you meant it. But Trowa, even if he could help, I can't pull anyone else in, especially anyone from outside the Jhereg house, without massively pissing off someone who is highly likely to kill me, so it's a bit of a moot point."_

"_You need the help. I suspect you can keep one meeting quiet. And after that, it's up to you and Heero what you choose to do."_

"_Trowa…I don't think I like you right now." _Since I was already up and standing, I headed for my dresser and pulled out clothing for the day. If my crazy friends were trying to talk me into stupid stunts, it felt kinda weird to be arguing with them only wearing sleeping shorts.

"_You get to pick the place, time, and conditions."_

I froze with my shirt half over my head. _"Seriously? You have _got_ to be kidding me. There is no way a guardsman agreed to terms that bad."_

"_He did."_

"_He's either suicidal or desperate," _I mused, pulling my shirt the rest of the way on.

"_Desperate."_

I mused on that a bit. _"I guess he might be, considering I basically did his job for him last night. Huh. Oh, what the fuck, I'm in the mood to piss someone off." _Since I was likely to wind up dead by the end of this anyway, what the hell. If this guardsman killed me, the Jhereg couldn't. If the Jhereg killed me for bringing him in, then he couldn't. At least this way I got to annoy both the Organization and the Phoenix Guards. And, if I admitted it to myself, I was curious about a guard either suicidal enough or stupid enough to ask for a meeting with a known assassin. _"I'll go if you come too." _And if Trowa got me killed, he was coming along for the ride to Deathsgate, and I'd bug him the entire way there.

"_Agreed. Time and place? And acceptability of escorts, since you've already stated that I am coming along."_

I thought for a minute. _"Uh…meeting on open ground, not the best idea. Need someplace out of sight." _In for a penny, in for a pound…whatever a penny and a pound were. Eastern sayings were odd. (But fun; it's a great trick to annoy people you don't like by continuously using sayings you know they don't understand) _"What the hell, let's meet in my office. I'll take the teleport block down for a few minutes at…exactly an hour and a half after noon today. You guardsman can bring one other person with him, because I'm feeling magnanimous. Or maybe just tired, it's hard to tell." _Trowa chuckled at that. _"You, oh wise and meddling Hawklord," _I said sarcastically,_ "know where my office is. It's your job to get them here. Teleport straight to the upstairs offices so no one sees you who shouldn't."_

"_All right. I will see you at an hour and a half after noon."_

"_If you get me killed, Trowa, I'm going to haunt your ass," _I warned.

"_You would be that stubborn, wouldn't you." _His chuckle faded out with the connection.

"Damn right," I growled out loud. "I can't fucking believe I just agreed to that." For the second time of the morning, I ran a palm over my face. "Gah." I was not looking forward to the next trick…which was breaking the news to Wufei.

In order to delay getting my head taken off by my second in command for a bit longer, I went through all my discarded clothing from the previous day and transferred all the hidden weapons to the clothing I was currently wearing, and then ate a leisurely meal of whatever the hell I found in the kitchen cupboards. I considered tidying up too, but decided that if I put off telling Wufei for too much longer he really would kill me and save our guardsman guest the trouble.

I sighed, pulled power from the Orb, and watched my surroundings fuzz from the familiar view of my living room to the familiar view of the street in front of my office. And hey, thinking about it, the view of the inside of the palace hallways was getting pretty familiar too. "I need to go to bars more," I muttered as I walked up to the door and into the shop.

Wufei frowned at me when I reached the inner sanctum upstairs. "You are in much earlier than I expected you to be."

"Oh, bite me." Okay, maybe I was a little more tired and annoyed than I'd thought. I sighed. "Sorry. This morning decided to bite me in the ass without any warning." I looked at Wufei and chewed my bottom lip. He was still frowning at me. I grabbed the chair from in front of his desk and scooted it back a good four feet before sitting in it.

That got me a quirked eyebrow. "Duo, why do I feel like you being all the way over there is a very bad sign?"

"Um, because it is?" I attempted to look innocent, but I think I hit sheepish instead. I grabbed my braid and fidgeted with the end.

Wufei sighed and said, "Now, I'm worried. The last time you came in acting like this it was because you agreed to a contract on Gowan, and he was supposed to be unreachable."

"Hey, I pulled that one off!" I said defensively.

"And nearly got yourself killed doing it. And now we're off topic."

"Oh. Right. Um. We're going to have guests this afternoon." I grinned hopefully at him.

He regarded me warily. "And the catch is?"

I ducked my head and fiddled with my braid some more. "…One's Trowa, one's a guardsman, and there will probably be a third that I don't know."

"Wait, _WHAT_?" Well, it didn't look like Wufei was going to kill me immediately, but that seemed to mainly be because I'd shocked him senseless and immobile. I decided to wait for his brain processes to start working again and just sat and fiddled. It took a minute. "…You invited a guardsman to meet with you."

"Sort of, yeah."

"Are you suicidal?"

I rubbed my left ear, which was now ringing due to the current volume of the conversation. "I told you about it, so probably. Can you keep it down a bit before someone else comes up here and they try to kill me too?"

Wufei took a visible calming breath. "Why don't you start from the beginning? The actual beginning, where this crazy, suicidal idea was conceived and why you think it might be survivable or, gods forbid, a _good _idea?"

"If it makes you feel better, I totally blame Trowa. He contacted me this morning; woke me up, actually. Apparently he knows the guard who almost caught me last night, and the guy asked him if he could find someone based on a voice." I held up a hand to forestall the question I knew was coming. "The answer is no, I asked. But somehow Trowa got into his mind that this guy and I should work together and wants us to meet and talk about it."

"And you actually _agreed_?"

I smacked my palm into my face, which was getting to be a bad habit. "Well, I did say he woke me up so I wasn't thinking completely straight…and there are good reasons that I think this'll be at the worst a waste of time. No one should end up hurt in any way, shape, or form."

"And these mystical reasons are?"

"I got to pick the place and time and Trowa says this guy's honest. And since I'm fairly certain Trowa can read my mind without me noticing and has done it before, I'd bet he's done the same to this guy. Worst case scenario, since the meeting is here and we can definitely take down one Phoenix Guard on our own home turf, we refuse to let him leave unless he gives his word to leave us alone and whatever other legalese you come up with to keep him off our backs."

"I am still unconvinced about your certainty that Trowa is trustworthy, and this is proving my worries true. You also mentioned one other person that, and I quote, you don't know." Wufei was doing that scary glare thing of his that made me remember that he was half Dzur…and Dzur tended to be very violent. "That could be anyone! Another guard, a psionicist who can block Trowa, a sorcerer better than you. This idea is insanity. I insist you call off the meeting now."

I glared right back. "No can do, I said it would happen and I don't lie. If you're that uncomfortable with it, you can leave the office and I'll get someone else in here as backup. Yes, it's a stupid idea, but those are the kind I'm best with. There's a very good chance this will never get beyond one meeting anyway; I'm going to treat this as an opportunity to get information about the Phoenix Guards and that's all." I overrode Wufei's attempt to speak and kept going. "Actually working with this guy is Trowa's idea, not mine, and I did not say I'd agreed to that, just to the meeting."

Wufei was still glaring enough that I knew I was going to be catching hell for this continually for the next while, but we'd had enough arguments over stupid shit I'd decided to do in the past that we both knew I was going to win the argument. Very few people can out-stubborn me, and Wufei wasn't one of them. "When?" he bit out sharply.

"Exactly an hour and a half after noon."

"Do you know anything about the people coming?"

"Besides Trowa? He's bringing them, by the way, so neither of them should be able to tell where they are. I have a name for the guardsman."

"And a lot of good that will do since we have about seven hours before your meeting and it usually takes that long just to find a Lyorn willing to let me see the records," Wufei grumbled as he pulled out a pen and a piece of parchment. "What is it?"

"Heero. I could give you some physical description as well if that would help."

"It wouldn't." He was going to be testy about this for ages, I could tell. He stuffed the parchment into a pocket and stood up. "I will go see what I can find on this Heero before noon. Do _not _agree to any more suicidal ideas while I'm gone. It's a wonder you've survived this long," he grumbled as he walked past me and stomped out of the room.

I winced. Wufei was really really not happy with me right then. This might actually have been the most suicidal thing I'd ever agreed to, outside of trying to protect the Empress in her own palace from another assassin bent on killing her. Which Wufei hadn't been mad at me for agreeing to, mostly because I hadn't had a choice then. And this time I had and I'd still gone with the option most likely to get me killed. "Maybe it's me," I muttered as I stood up, chair legs scraping the floor. I shoved the chair back out of the way and headed into my office.

In retrospect, my choice of time slot for my suicidal meeting was about as dumb as agreeing to the meeting at all. I had about seven hours to go, which was just long enough that I felt like I should be doing something productive and just short enough that there really wasn't much I could realistically do. My original plans for the day had been to go back to Empress-watching. I'd be less effective since I'd only have a little while from the start of court to when I had to leave, but it wasn't like I had anything to do in the office.

And I'd never sat still well.

I hauled a medium-sized chest out from behind my desk, fished around in my pockets for the key for about two minutes, gave up, and slid a set of lock picks out of my right sleeve cuff instead. It's not like using them was any slower. In seconds I had the chest open and started pulling out miscellaneous clothing bits. I turned a blue shirt inside out to reveal red and pulled out a pair of golden-brown trousers to go with it. A brown cloak completed the ensemble, and not for the first time I wondered why the hell so many houses had brown in their color schemes. It just made it easier for people like me to quietly pretend to be part of houses not our own since we didn't have to buy as much clothing to cover all the possibilities. Maybe it was a primary colors thing, since white and black were absurdly popular as well.

I switched out shirts and cloaks and settled for just putting the brown trousers over my black ones; the extra fabric didn't get in the way of any of the nasty surprises I kept hidden in my boots and it saved time. I did have to transfer some weapons, but not as many as it might have been. I rigged a lot of my clothes and daggers so the weapons were connected to me and not the fabric and the cut of the clothing was interchangeable. I shoved my braid down the back of my tunic under my cloak, and presto, I was a Lyorn.

Out of the office, down the stairs, through the front room while giving a cheery wave to the proprietor of the flowershop who just rolled her eyes in return, and out the door, from where I was able to teleport to the courtyard in front of the palace.

Per usual I fought the desire to copy the flowershop owner and roll my eyes upon arriving. Someone, somewhere, had decided that columns and statuary representing the houses were majestic. I always thought it was overblown. Actually, it was more likely that each Emperor had wanted to have something representing their house added to the Imperial wing of the palace and over the years the additions had gotten excessive. But that was giving people credit for some brains, which I didn't particularly like to do, and it was still overblown. Also, that much white marble was seriously blinding around noon when the sun hit fully, so it was annoying too.

I moved with the crowd in the courtyard, which somehow never seemed to diminish, toward the stairs that lead up towards the throne room. Vendors always took advantage of the people drawn to open court audiences and set up shop around the area outside, which was part of the reason for the crowd in the courtyard. The other reason was, no one could teleport directly into the throne room for security reasons. I'd been relieved when I'd realized exactly how strong that teleport block was, since if I hadn't thought it was good enough I'd've had to do something about it, and anything that big would definitely be noticeable.

I shifted slightly to avoid getting the elbow of an overexuberant Orca applied to my nose and started trudging up the stairs. This was something else the designers had thought looked impressive but wound up being annoying. Who wants to walk up lots of stairs? Not me.

Off the stairs and past the columns and through the giant doors that probably took craftsmen a couple hundred years to finish the detail on. I suppressed another eye roll. Coming here all the time was giving me lots of practice with that. Once actually in the throne room, I slid forward from the door and joined the throng on the outside edges and put on my paying-attention-because-I-am-a-Lyorn-and-must-take-everything-seriously face. I was getting lots of practice with that too.

Currently some Tiassa, gesticulating enthusiastically from the prescribed across-a-platform-and-down-the-five-steps distance from the throne the Empress was regally sitting on, was trying to get funding for an exploratory mission off the coast. It was, as usual for a Tiassa, a harebrained idea that would probably be brilliant if it actually worked but for now was making confused eyebrows go up all over the place.

I tuned out and, while keeping my facial expression pleasant and frozen in listening position, used my eyes and my peripheral vision to check out the scene. There were more uniformed guards than usual, but not so many that anyone not looking for it would notice. Although the ones in a place I could focus my attention on without being suspicious looked unusually alert (I'd seen a Dzur guard the other day who, based on the muscles twitching in her arms, was mentally running through a fight sequence).

I would also have bet money that the sorcery protections around the throne itself had been given a massive upgrade, but I didn't want to do a full check on the off chance someone would notice what I was doing. The most interesting bit of the panorama was a few "citizens" in the crowd that I could tell were guards not in uniform. _Well, well, maybe they do learn._ I'd come in disguised as a Teckla and now, in order to prevent the citizens of Adrilankha from realizing that someone was after their Empress, they were copying me. It was almost cute. Also kind of funny, since pretty much anyone in the Phoenix Guards was noble and therefore it was really easy to tell what house they came from just by looking at their facial features. That many people wearing their hoods up indoors just looked goofy.

My room sweeps hadn't turned up anyone acting suspiciously, although a good assassin would be able to blend in. I was case in point. But still, with the guards on alert acting now would be really really dumb, so I got comfortable and prepared for another boring few hours. The upshot was, this time I actually could leave after a few hours and not spend the entire day in here.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: And welcome to a chapter where almost nothing happens. This is what pops out when I write myself into a timing corner and have to come up with something. You'd think I'd learn at some point, but noooo. I did manage to get some nice snark in near the end that I like though... Okay everyone, please drop me a review. I'll take 'I was here'. I want to know if people are actually reading this or not, and being not much of a writer I could use some good feedback too! I've got a cold and I'm buried in work. Please make my day and let me know what you thought.

Disclaimer: not my characters, not my world (except some of the geography, that I did make up), not my quote.

Chapter 7

"It is simpler to run than to fight"

Nate Bucklin's "The Road," quoted from Steven Brust's _To Reign in Hell_ pg. 123

An hour before noon I eeled my way through the crowd again, this time going the other way and out the door. The court was going to break for lunch soon and the smart people were already trickling out to beat the lines at the vendors, which made my departure less noticeable. I wanted to get back to the office in enough time to hear any information Wufei'd managed to dig up and prepare whatever I needed to prepare before we had guests.

I reflected not for the first time that it was a good thing that the Orb (via some connection to the Great Sea of Amorphia that had made no sense the one time I'd dared to ask someone to explain it to me) provided basically an unlimited amount of sorcerous energy to anyone who needed it. I teleported way too much.

Once outside in the open market area, I grinned and shook my head at a man attempting to sell me meat of dubious quality, stepped back into a shadowy area, and teleported to the doorstep outside the office. The first thing I did after walking inside was pull my braid out of the back of my shirt with a sigh of relief.

I jumped when Wufei said, "If keeping it that long is uncomfortable, why don't you just cut it?"

I glared at him for startling me. Wufei could walk damned quietly when he wanted to. "I like it long," I answered.

He snorted. Variations on that question popped up fairly often and my response never changed. "Come on," he said as he turned and headed back up the stairs. I rolled my eyes and followed. Per usual, the guy behind the counter totally ignored us.

"So, what'd you find out?" I prodded as I hauled the extra chair over to Wufei's desk and dropped into it backwards so I could lean my chin on the backrest.

He rearranged a few files and opened one. "Dragonlord, given name Heero. Joined the Phoenix Guards about ten years ago, was almost immediately assigned to guarding the Empress and has not been reassigned since." Wufei shuffled a few papers around. "He is still a young Dragon, under five hundred years old. Model guard, no marks against him on his record, but nothing really distinguishing either." Wufei sat back a bit. "That last is probably because of his posting. Generally, no one is suicidal enough or crazy enough to threaten the Empress. I imagine a guard assigned solely to bodyguard duty has very little to do."

I smirked a bit. "Oh yeah, watching open court all day for years. Somebody give this guy a medal, I'm about ready to kill someone from boredom and I've only been at it for a week."

"Unfortunately," Wufei closed the file, "that's about it. Model guard so no infractions, guarding the Empress so no distinctions. His holdings are fairly small and well-run by his seneschal."

"Well, that's boring."

"Slightly more interesting is my attempt to investigate who he might bring with him," Wufei said as he slid another file to the top of the stack. He also took the opportunity to glare at me again. _Yup, he's still mad._ He flipped open the file and riffled through hand-written notes. "From the maids I managed to convince to converse with me, he has very few close friends. While he is on speaking terms with the other guards assigned to the Empress, he seems to keep to himself and is close to none of them. The maid who cleans his room said he rarely invites people back with him, which might have something to do with the size of those rooms. But he sleeps alone and the one person the maid recalls having seen multiple times is a blond Issola."

"How about Trowa? Apparently they're friends too. And if this guy has only two friends, that's seriously pathetic."

"How many friends do you have?" That shut me up, since the answer was basically two. One of whom I apparently had in common with a guardsman. "And none of the maids could ever recall seeing someone of Trowa's description, and he is rather distinctive."

I snickered. "Yup. His hair is weirder than mine."

"Anyway," Wufei headed me off before I could say anything else, "since the maids saw nothing, I went to the records and back-checked cases. Apparently Trowa is often the one called in when the Phoenix Guards need an expert on psionics. Exactly how he and Heero met I don't know, but that is likely the reason."

"Huh. Okay," I said. I absently noted that sometime during the information rundown I'd started fiddling with the end of my braid again. "If the maids have seen nothing, there's probably nothing to see. Cleaning staff gets everywhere. I invited this guy to bring one friend. Assuming he doesn't want to bring another guard, since they'd likely call him insane and lock him up for his own good once they heard where he wanted them to go, all that's left is that blond Issola. Got a name for her?"

"Him." My eyebrows went up. "According to the cleaning staff, they are simply friends. Get your mind out of the gutter. And I think, although I may be wrong," tone of voice said that was extremely unlikely, "that his name is Quatre and he is a diplomat who works with the Empress."

"Seriously? How in the hell did a diplomat and a guard end up friends?"

"Does it actually matter?"

"No, but now I'm really curious."

"Unfortunately for your curiosity, I have no idea. Records show Quatre is a decent swordsman, although nothing spectacular, and there is nothing anywhere to indicate he may be more than a competent sorcerer."

"Diplomat first and foremost, huh? Well, diplomats may be annoying, but I don't think we're in danger of getting talked to death, 'Fei. Maybe you'll finally have a chance at an intelligent conversation, since you usually say I'm lacking in that department." I dropped my braid and stretched.

Wufei just shook his head at me. "You have the gods' own luck. The one guard you run into may actually listen to reason and the guest he is likely to bring is virtually harmless." He frowned. "If he brings him. Since this diplomat seems to be a noncombatant, it is possible the guard will simply come alone rather than endanger his friend."

"I doubt it. If he trusts Trowa enough to meet protect him from me, he'll prob'ly trust him enough to protect someone else too. Or at least keep things civil. And you did say he can use a sword, and half-assed backup is better than no backup."

"This from the assassin who never has backup."

"See? I'd know. And since we've now basically cleared up who our guests are, I'm going to get changed so I'm a Jhereg and not a Lyorn when they arrive." I slid back off the chair and gave a half-wave as I bounced into my office. For some reason, most meetings happened in Wufei's office and I'd never quite figured out why.

Brown and red garb got pulled off and put back in the chest they'd come from while I retrieved my clothing from where I'd stashed it on my swivel chair. I relocked the chest with my lockpicks and shoved it back against the wall out of the way.

It was now three minutes until noon according to the Orb. I hadn't really been expecting Wufei to be waiting for me, and I'd thought info sharing would take longer, so now I had extra time before I had to take the teleport block down. _I could come up with what I'm going to say when they get here…oh, screw that. I don't do planning._ I made a face and pulled some throwing daggers out of various places around my clothing. Sitting around and stewing was not a good way to pass the time.

I proceeded to add new knife marks to the wall next to the door as I tossed knife after knife at it, trying just for fun to make a perfect circle with the holes. I made a mental bet to myself that Wufei would tell me to quiet down before I'd been at it for longer than half an hour. I won that bet after fifteen minutes.

"Duo! Some of us need quiet in order to read!"

"I'm bored!"

"Do something productive. When was the last time you visited your businesses?"

"Uh…sometime last week before I got threatened into a job." He had a point. Generally leaving things alone was detrimental to morale and made people get uppity. "I should probably go do that."

"Yes you should."

Back in Jhereg black and grey, I worked my way back down the stairs and outside and walked off through my territory. It wasn't much, but it was mine. A few gambling houses, a fence or two, a couple of drinking places, a few sets of flats. There was one narcotics shop, and I'd gotten rid of the brothel as soon as I picked up the area; it just wasn't worth the trouble.

There were, of course, also legal businesses and apartment-type buildings in the area that I had nothing to do with as well. Heck, I lived in one of the apartments that my business dealings had no relation to; it made me harder to track. But those businesses really weren't my problem; the legal things were legal, so the most I would ever have to do with them involved highly unusual circumstances, such as protection money for the duration of the fighting if someone else decided to stick their nose into my territory or an entry into my employ if they wanted to open something not legal in the back.

Which was how I'd gotten an office behind a flowershop in the first place. Pretty much any illegal activity needed a front; otherwise it would get busted within a few days of opening. No front so the guards in the area could have an excuse to pass the business of as legitimate was pretty much tantamount to painting a "shut me down" sign on the door. Usually the same person ran the front and the back of a business and the back just had more enforcers in it. The system worked; gambling establishments were usually in the back of bars or, in one case in my territory, an inn. Fences were located in or around pawnshops. The narcotics shop hid in an herbalist's place. It worked.

Anyway, I went off on my rounds to smile and be an official presence to my minions. Well, sort-of-minions since they were basically autonomous.

"Hey Duo, where've you been?" Howard the barkeep called as I walked into his shop. Only Easterner I had running a business in my territory; due to discrimination, they tended to keep to themselves. Generally no one gave Howard any flack, though; he was a fun guy and nearly always had business because people looking for a drink and some talk and maybe a few bad jokes found a good supply of all of them with him. I'd also backed him in the past when he had trouble, which warned off anyone from causing serious problems. His bar by itself made up a good chunk of my earnings each week.

"Hey, I've been busy. Get a guy a drink before he has to go back to boring work?" I grinned at him and parked my butt at the counter. There were a few people in the bar, all at their own tables; it was the wrong time of day to be in here since the place didn't really serve food, just alcohol. In a few hours it would be full and this evening after dinner it would be packed. "Still got any of that Fenarian brandy?"

"Of course." He pulled a bottle down, brought it and a cup over, and poured me some.

I sipped at it. "Mmm, still the best I've ever had." Howard got quite a bit of his alcohol from illegal imports. Meant it was damn good stuff a lot of the time. He also managed to get some of the better Eastern brandies (he taught me not to call them 'wines' like most Dragaerans do) because of family connections back East.

He looked pleased. "Hey, you should come by more often. You're too young to be workin' yourself to death. Oh, I picked up a new joke the other day too," he called over his shoulder as he pulled out a rag and started polishing up some of the cups behind the bar.

I laughed. "All right, let's hear it, see if it's up to par."

"How many Yendi does it take to sharpen a sword?"

"How many?" I asked warily. The sword/house setup was an old one, and a lot of the answers were more painful than funny.

"Three. One to sharpen the sword and one to confuse the issue."

I snickered. "Hit the nail on the head that time. That one's pretty good, actually, especially given the formula."

Howard looked wounded. "Hey, don't knock the formula. It wouldn't exist if people didn't like it."

"True." I finished the last of my brandy and stood back up. I was still grinning from the joke. "Well, you have my official permission to tell that joke to customers. Sorry to run, but I wasn't kidding about the busy thing."

"And I wasn't kidding about workin' yourself to death!" He swatted his rag at me. "Get your butt in here more often, and bring a joke yourself next time."

"Got it!" I called over my shoulder on the way out.

I hummed as I continued down the street. Trading jokes, good or bad, with Howard was always fun. I'd thrown one at him just to see how he'd react the first time I'd met him. I figured an Easterner−especially one so obviously Eastern as Howard since he'd already lost the hair on the top of his head while Dragaerans, for whatever reason, are incapable of going bald−who wanted to mostly serve Dragaerans should be quick on his verbal feet. Howard had passed my test with flying colors. Instead of being startled or confused, he'd laughed and returned me a terrible pun and I'd decided he was an okay guy.

I worked my way down the street, popping into two gambling houses and a tenement I actually did own on the way, and took a left at the next intersection. I walked in a grid-type pattern, hitting businesses as I passed them and exchanging small talk with most of the proprietors. A few, per usual, did little besides giving me a nod of acknowledgement, but most at least chatted for a bit.

I ran into only one problem on my rounds, a simple request from a fence getting fewer items coming in than usual to defer interest on one of his loans. He made a good case and he was generally dependable so I agreed and made a mental note to tell Wufei.

I made it back to the office five minutes before I was due to take the teleport block down. The good news was, now I didn't have time to stew. The bad news was, I still had five minutes to fidget. I killed two minutes giving Wufei the name and information for the interest-free guy, then went back into my office, and pretty much immediately came back out again. Trowa'd been upstairs, but only into Wufei's office, not mine, so that's where he'd teleport to.

I pulled out the extra chair again, sat backwards on it with my back facing the wall, and fidgeted back and forth.

"Duo, I can and will strangle you with your own hair. You have a minute and a half, you can sit still for that long," Wufei growled at me.

"I'd like to see you try," I muttered, but I sat still.

When my connection to the Imperial Orb finally told me it was exactly an hour and a half after noon, I took a deep breath, concentrated, and pulled away the web of power blocking anyone from teleporting into or out of my office.

Task accomplished, I stood up and shoved my chair out of the way. I wasn't so crass as to actually draw a weapon, but I kept my hands close to a few surprises if I needed them. About thirty seconds later, three people blinked into existence in the middle of the room with a slight whoosh of displaced air.

I took the half second I needed to put the teleport block back into place. It was easy since all I'd really done this time was "shift" it, even if I couldn't really tell you where I'd moved it to. It's not like the block had landed on the neighbors or anything; possibly I'd slid it into another dimension, but I'd decided a while ago that I didn't really want to know if that was the case. Task done, I eyed my visitors.

Trowa was as tall as usual and looking just as expressionless. I didn't bother to do more than note his position between the other two men.

The one closer to me was the guard from the other night. Better lighting and the opportunity to pay attention to what I was looking at proved he had messy dark hair and was also on the short side for a Dragaeran. He had a broadsword over his back and no other obvious weapons. From the way he'd positioned his arms, I'd bet he had no hidden weapons beyond maybe a boot dagger. Certainly nothing he'd be able to get to in a hurry.

Based on the little Wufei'd dug up, his guess as to who the other visitor would be was probably correct. Blond, Issola based on the features, shorter than the guardsman by a bit, and not carrying any obvious weapons at all. With this one, I wasn't going to guess about hidden ones. Issola can be tricky.

We all just stared at each other edgily for a few seconds. Per expectation, the Issola broke the silence. "Thank you for agreeing to this meeting," he said as he bowed from the waist. He smiled as he straightened and just waited. That was a clear indication that it was now my move; he had purposely not given his name in order to avoid causing me to be rude if I didn't want to give mine.

What the hell, with all the elbow-deep shit I was in already, what was a name? "Duo," I said and nodded in his general direction. "I'd say nice to meet you, but circumstances being as they are I don't think it would be honest." I tilted my head slightly to the right, keeping the guardsman in the side of my vision so I wouldn't be staring. "You would be Quatre, right?"

"Yes." He beamed at me. I was a bit taken aback. Who beams at an assassin, for crying out loud?

"You investigated me?" Our guardsman guest glared at me. Well, glared harder; he'd pretty much been glaring the entire time, except for a somewhat startled glance at the hair when he'd first gotten a good look at me.

"Duh." I started ticking off fingers as I talked. "Your name is Heero, your post is boring, you're scared for the Empress, and you're pissed because you don't like my job. Did I miss anything?" Trowa snorted and I almost jumped. I raised an eyebrow. "Finally realized you're not a statue, oh friend whose meddling is likely to get me killed?"

"Temporarily. If you don't want me to forget again, a chair might be nice."

"Oooh, manners." I grinned. The Issola was playing nice, the guard was pissed off but playing nice, and Trowa was joking around so danger was minimal. "There's two chairs in here and two in the other room. I call dibs on sitting on Wufei's desk." That earned me a glare from Wufei. "Hang on a second." And I deliberately turned my back and went through the door to my office. I was pretty sure no one was going to try to kill me, but it still made the spot between my shoulder blades itch. I hauled my swivel chair and the guest chair out of my office into Wufei's and dropped them near the desk. "You all can play stone-knife-paper for who gets the good chair."

Wufei sat in his usual chair, the guardsman edgily sat in the chair closest to him, which happened to be the one I'd been sitting in earlier, and the Issola politely motioned Trowa to take the swivel chair, to which Trowa made a polite deferring motion, the Issola made a polite insisting gesture, and the whole thing might have kept going if the guard hadn't given up and growled, "One of you sit down already."

I snickered and hopped onto the edge of the desk. Trowa settled the chair issue by simply sitting on my guest chair since it was closer to him, and the Issola got the swivel chair. We were now in a loose circle, Wufei to my right, the guard to my left, the Issola next to the guard, and Trowa between him and Wufei. It was somewhat awkward, but it could have been worse. There could have been weapons out.


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: My beta is totally to blame for the quote on this chapter. Beyond that, I am really fond of this chapter, mostly because this set of dialogue was waaaay too much fun to write. And a note to the person who mentioned the mini-cliffy at the end of chapter 7...you're totally going to hate me for 10 and 11. Mostly 11. Mwahahahaha. Drop me an "I was here" or a more detailed review if you feel like it and make my day. Just a warning, this is looking like it'll be a week from hell, so the next update could be early if I decide updating is a good way to lose stress, or late if I don't have time to edit.

Disclaimer: not my characters, not my world, not my quote.

Chapter 8

"I'm not spoiling anything. I'm throwing in Red Herrings. I'm not sure what a red herring is, but I've got a bathtub full of the buggers."

-Misha Collins' twitter page

"I'd offer drinks," I said before awkward silence could set in again, "but I decided it would be better if no one knew I had visitors. So, house rules. One." I raised my right hand and flicked up a finger. "No drawing weapons. That could escalate way too quickly. Two." Second finger. "Please keep insults to a minimum. Ditto for reasoning. Three." I looked at the guardsman. He was looking back and I was a bit startled to realize he had blue eyes. I dropped my hand back down onto my knee. "I am as unthrilled about this as you are," I told him. "Tall, dark, and silent over there," I nodded at Trowa, "talked me into meeting with you, but nothing more than that." I sat back a bit and leaned on my hands. "You have questions about the other night, so we might as well start there. Ask whatever you want, but no guarantees I'll answer."

"Were you telling the truth?" That glare could be a weapon.

"Okay, straight to the important bits. Yes, everything I said to you before was true." I absentmindedly rubbed at my forehead with my palm. "Stupid of me to say out loud, but that's what I get for trying to break a teleport block and have a chat at the same time."

"How do you and Trowa know each other?"

That one caught me off guard. "Okay, now _that_ was totally random. Also totally irrelevant." The guard opened his mouth to say something else, but I headed him off. "Irrelevant, but I don't care if you know, so to answer, he tracked me down after running into a piece of sorcery I'd done. We hit it off pretty well, stayed friends, and started trading favors."

Trowa just half-smiled. I would have thrown something at him, but as jumpy as people were, it might have caused actual mayhem instead of joking mayhem, so I stuck my tongue out instead. The blond hid a smile; I think he appreciated our odd brand of humor.

No such luck for the guardsman, though. He now looked like he was chewing on something unpleasant, probably trying to form a question. "Just spit it out," I sighed. "Given circumstances, I'd bet even your Issola friend will excuse a little rudeness. And you're guests. If I haven't made it clear yet, that puts you under my protection rather than in danger from me. Unless, of course," I grinned, "you do something to remove yourselves from my good graces, like try to kill me."

That little speech earned me an eye roll from the guard. Something told me I wasn't being taken very seriously, but I was kind of used to that. Short Dragaeran male with ass-long braid? I did stealth better than intimidation. "You said you were sent to protect the Empress. You are an assassin. Why take a protection job?"

My face must have done something interesting. "You didn't have a choice, did you?" Quatre asked quietly.

"No," I said. "And I guess it's true that Issola are much too perceptive. I said before that Trowa's interference might get me killed, and I meant it. We're meeting in my office because I don't trust the security anywhere else and if certain parties knew I was meeting with you, I would probably become dead."

"Technically Duo," Wufei said, "we are in _my_ office."

"Semantics. I do own the building." I was grateful to Wufei for lightening the mood a bit; I didn't like being reminded that I wasn't quite as high on the food chain as I would have liked to be.

"Why you?" And back to the heavy stuff. Sort of.

I laughed. "You know, I asked that question myself. Apparently I have a reputation for being a bit unconventional. I'm also intimidatable, since I like not being dead."

"I'm fairly certain that's not a word," the guard pointed out.

"I'm fairly certain it doesn't matter."

"I'm fairly certain you're both off topic," Trowa cut in with another half-smile. I had a moment of unreality as I realized I'd just done the same kind of verbal sparring with a guard as I would have if I was talking to Wufei or Trowa, and found myself wondering what, exactly, had just happened.

"Ah, yeah." I shoved my brain back into gear. "Got any more questions I'm likely to answer?"

"Why are you letting someone else order you around?"

I resisted the urge to bang my head on the desk. "Dead. Been there. Done that. Was not fun. Do not want to do it again any time soon. Got any more relevant questions I'm likely to answer that are not about _me_?"

"Who is trying to kill the Empress, and why?"

"Relevant," I acknowledged, "but I can't answer that one." Aaaand, awkward time. That glare should definitely be considered a weapon. I was just making mental notes about which weapons would be easiest to grab when I got jumped when Quatre spoke up.

"What do you mean by 'can't'?" he asked.

"It's…" I tried to figure out how to explain it. "It's kind of an honor thing for the Jhereg. There are unwritten rules. You don't sell out your employer, you don't go to the Empire, you keep your business deals. A lot of it is common sense." I shrugged. "I can't tell you who hired me, and I can't tell you who I'm guarding against. It would break the code."

The blond frowned and he gazed past me as he thought. I was surprised when the guard didn't say anything and just waited. Quatre blinked and got the look on his face people get when they just figured something out that should have been obvious. "From the way you phrased that," he said, "you have been contracted to protect the Empress against a specific assassin. Am I right?"

"Yes…" I answered cautiously. I'd kind of thought that was obvious.

"Who hired that person? Can you tell us that? They didn't hire you, so you have no obligation to them, and they are likely not in the same line of work as you."

I opened my mouth and shut it again. "Shit. I would be able to, you're right. _But_," I held up a hand, forestalling anyone saying anything, "I don't know who that is. Which is damned annoying." I was kind of pissed now, since this discussion was bringing home again all the facts and details about this situation that no one had bothered to let me in on. I looked over at Heero. "That guy I killed the other night? Not the person I was told was after the Empress. And it never even crossed my mind that it might be a coincidence and two assassins might be after the Empress at the same time. It's just too much of a suicide job."

I frowned, reached back, pulled my braid over my shoulder, and started fiddling with the end. I held up a hand again when it looked like Heero was going to say something. _The council tells me to protect the Empress…they even give me a name for the assassin. But he isn't the only assassin, probably just the best. They implied Zechs might hire other assassins, but an assassin hiring another assassin for the same job he's doing himself makes no sense. Why completely ignore the fact that there must be an employer? Why imply that there isn't an employer? What does more than one assassin mean?_ "Wufei, what does there being more than one assassin hired mean?" I looked over at him.

He frowned at me. "Determination, perhaps? A deadline?"

"I don't know, the guy I took out was fairly pathetic. The Phoenix Guards could have taken him out if they'd thought to guard the entire perimeter…" I trailed off, stared at my braid, and ignored the glare I knew was coming from my left. Another piece of misinformation. I'd noted before that Zechs was not much better than me, if he was better at all. Assassins, even bad ones and neither Zechs nor I was bad, don't come cheap. _Why hire a mediocre and a fuck-up instead of consolidating cash and hiring someone in the next rank up? I know I couldn't take out the Empress even if I really tried, the Orb would prevent it._

…_Oh. Well, shit._

"Never mind," I said tightly. "All bets are off. And I _hate _being fucked around with."

"Duo?" Wufei asked, and I knew from his intake of breath when I raised my head to look at him that my eyes were burning. I may not look like much, but when I am pissed my glares become weapons too. And I was pissed.

I looked over at Heero. He didn't react quite the way Wufei had, but then he had already seen me standing over a dead body. "I think it's already been established that, although I like being alive, I'm willing to do stupid shit sometimes. So. I was hired to assassinate a man named Zechs."

"Duo!" I couldn't tell from his tone of voice if Wufei was more worried about my telling secrets that would get me killed or about breaking propriety. Stick up the ass and all that.

"You can stop panicking though, about the Empress." I raised one leg, rested my foot on the desk, and leaned on my knee. "She was never in any danger. You said determination, Wufei. Determination for what?"

"To kill the Empress," he said tightly. "What are you playing at?"

I snorted. "Seriously? Zechs is no better than I am and I could maybe get just close enough to the Empress to get toasted by the Orb. And that second assassin was a fuckup. That's the point, 'Fei. I assumed at the beginning that I was hired with the intention of preventing the Empress's death and thus preventing another Dragon-Jhereg-and-whatever-other-houses-get-involved-this-time War. But what happens if the assassin gets close to the Empress but doesn't succeed in killing her?"

"War, if the House of the Dragon knows about it. Successful or not, the attempt would still have been made," Heero answered. "If it is kept quiet, possibly nothing."

"I wasn't hired to prevent the Empress death," I said flatly. "I was hired to stop the attempt from, essentially, happening at all. I'd bet anything the…people who hired me are currently working on their own to take down the mastermind of this plan, whoever the hell it is."

"You were hired under false pretenses?" Trowa looked at me, trying to understand. "That would not make you this angry."

"Being jerked around does, and there's a big fucking difference between not telling me the real reason you want someone dead and not telling me what the actual job you're hiring me for is." Confused looks were still happening. I snorted. "Okay, from the beginning: someone in the Jhereg House wants a war between the Jhereg and the other houses. So they hired Zechs to try to kill the Empress, probably giving him instructions to be as public about it as possible. He was never meant to succeed, and neither was that other guy I killed. That guy _would _have been caught by the guards, but not without probably reaching the Empress' rooms. And the Phoenix Guards is full of Dragons, who in the past have proven themselves willing to start wars over honor."

Now comprehension was dawning all around the room. "So you were hired," Quatre said, "to block the attempt before it happened. Or at the least before it became public."

I smirked. "So they blackmailed me, without telling me what the hell was actually going on, to clean up a mess they probably started themselves in the first place. The only reason they aren't breaking the unwritten rules around here is that no one's actually come up with rules for shit like this yet. I think I'm done cooperating." I turned to Heero again, still grinning mockingly, and dared him with my eyes. "So, guardsman, your Empress is safe. Care to help me stop a war?"

He stared for a moment, then licked his lips. "Why?"

I raised my eyebrows. "Come on, your job might suck, but you must know history better than that. If a war starts, the Dragon will decimate the Jhereg, but the Jhereg will systematically assassinate any and all important Dragons. And Jhereg don't make battle lines, no honorable war for you there."

His smirk matched mine. "I'm in."

"As am I," Quatre cut in politely. Don't ask me how someone can make what is basically an interruption polite, but he managed it.

"Uh, no offense, but you're an Issola," I said. "I'm an assassin, Heero's a guard, Wufei's handy with a sword…"

Wufei snorted. "I don't get asked about my willingness to participate?"

"No," I deadpanned. "I'd assumed being dead once already had sufficiently motivated you."

"Fair enough."

"I suspect there is a story there, but it seems to be beside the point at the moment. If someone once told you Issola can't fight, you were sadly misinformed," Quatre said to me.

"Actually, I got told to make sure I never pissed any off and found out. No, I didn't assume you can't fight, the digging Wufei did on Heero said you were a decent swordsman. But how confident are you against multiple opponents or opponents who don't fight fair?" A dagger whistled past my ear and thunked into the wall. "Never mind," I said as I made sure my ear was still intact. "Remind me to never piss you off."

"I'll be sure to," he said cheerfully. Issola scare me.

"We need a plan," Heero said as Wufei got up, retrieved the dagger in the wall, and handed it back to Quatre. He didn't seem surprised that Quatre wanted in. I decided that this might be how a guard and a diplomat became friends. But I wasn't going to ask; one dagger that close to my head was enough, thanks very much.

"Fair enough." I dropped the leg I was leaning on back down and leaned forward on my thighs instead. "So we know Zechs, the assassin, has been contracted to kill the Empress publicly enough to start a war. Unfortunately, that's about it."

"You know," Trowa said, "there may have been another point to the attack last night. It may have also been intended to warn the Phoenix Guards and the rest of the palace so they are alerted and on hair-trigger."

I looked at Heero, since I figured he'd have the best idea of what the guard and the palace staff would think. "It is possible. Very possible. And if a spectacle is wanted, there is a very good chance the assassin will attack during a public audience."

"I don't know," I said and shrugged. "I've been watching the open court for an entire week and nothing happened. It was really boring too," I muttered.

"Tell me about it," Heero said under his breath. I decided I probably wasn't supposed to hear that, and more important matters were being discussed, so I let it pass. For the moment. "Open court is still likely to draw the most controversy," he continued so everyone could hear. "If the garden assassin had made it to the Empress, any Phoenix Guards present would have been angry, but we are trained professionals. We don't start wars that easily."

"Maybe," Quatre said thoughtfully, "the assassin sent last night was an unexpected addition to the plan?"

I made a face. "Can you repeat that in understandable English?"

Wufei looked intrigued. "He means perhaps the employer is running out of time. Becoming desperate enough to hire a second assassin."

"Why not just tell Zechs to hurry the hell up?"

Trowa smirked. "And how would you react to that, Duo?"

"Uh…good point. Ah, dammit! I just realized that until someone takes down the employer, this is going to keep going. Even if I take out Zechs, the guy'll just hire someone else."

"So we need to find and eliminate the employer as well," Heero said.

"Very nicely said, and now that that's been stated, I repeat that I have no fucking idea who the employer is," I said in my most sarcastic tone of voice. Heero glared.

Fortunately, Trowa headed us off before it got any farther. "You don't know. Would Zechs?"

"Probably. No, take it back, definitely. There's no way someone would agree to a hit on the Empress without knowing who's paying them to do it. Mario may have proved it can theoretically be done, but it's still suicidal."

"Then when he makes his attempt, I can mind probe him."

"That's illegal," Heero said.

"So's trying to kill the Empress," I pointed out. Heero gave an almost shrug, which I decided to interpret as agreement. "Trowa, can I assume you're good enough to do a mind probe no matter what's going on in the background? Because things are likely to go to Deathsgate in a handbasket when Zechs makes his attempt."

"If I may be the voice of reason, as usual," Wufei said, "if Zechs makes his attempt, his employer's goal will still be realized. A Jhereg assassin will have made an attempt on the Empress."

"But now, something he never predicted will have happened. A Jhereg and a guard will be working together to stop the attempt," Quatre said.

I let my natural cynicism make itself known. "And that will matter to the pissed-off Dragonlords…how?"

"It will matter if I say it does," said Heero.

I thought about that for a second. When I'd been "hired" by Marevin and I'd proposed warning the guards, his counter had depended on the Dragons still blaming the Jhereg for the attempt happening. Cooperation, even if no one but the five people in the room right now ever knew about it, might just overrule that blame. If Heero actually had that much pull with the guard, that is. "Do you actually have that much pull with the guard?"

"No. But for some reason the Empress likes me."

"Wait, is _that_ why you've been stuck on hall monitor duty practically since you joined the guard?"

"Hall…what?" Heero just blinked at me in confusion.

"Eastern saying, Heero. And yes," Quatre said.

"If that's what happens when the Empress likes you, please leave my name out of any explanation you ever make of events," I said. Trowa chuckled.

Heero still looked a bit confused, but I think he decided it would be safer not to ask for more clarification. "I suspect that your identity can be kept quiet."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm an assassin. If you weren't going to 'keep my identity quiet,' I'd tell you to go hang. I think your sarcasm monitor is broken."

Trowa made an interesting cough noise. I glanced over and discovered he was trying not to laugh, and the corners of Quatre's mouth were twitching. I turned a bit further and discovered Wufei with his hand over his face rubbing his temples. Oh-kay.

I looked back at Heero, who had apparently decided discretion was the better part of valor since he hadn't said anything yet and wasn't looking like he was ready to say anything now. Either that or I'd pissed him off enough that he didn't want to talk to me anymore, both ways worked. "We still require a plan of attack," Wufei pointed out.

"I thought we had one," I grumbled. "Zechs shows, we attack him. Pretty straight forward."

"Also stupid," Wufei said.

"We don't know how or when he's going to attack. Unless you have a clairvoyant up your sleeve, planning's going to be kind of hard."

"Not necessarily," Quatre said. Pretty much everyone in the room shifted to stare at him. "He needs an opening in order to attack. Why not give him one?"

"No," Heero said.

"Good idea," I said.

We stared at each other.

"It does not need to be a real opening, Heero," Quatre said patiently. "Simply make it _appear_ to be a real opening. If Zechs takes the bait, you will be able to predict his moves. If he doesn't, no harm will be done."

"That will require good planning in order to prevent an imaginary opening from turning into a real one," Wufei said. I was happy, and I had to contain my urge to jump up and down with glee. The Plan had officially won majority vote.

"Ah, crap."

"What, Duo?" Quatre sounded worried, but Wufei headed him off.

"Don't mind him, he just realized that planning means lots of strategy, talking, and coming to an agreement."

"Yeah, all the boring stuff. I'm not good at that much advance planning. May I be excused?"

"No."

"Dammit."


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: In celebration of the fact that I have a 4-day weekend, here is chapter 9! This is another chapter where almost nothing happens, but I'm also really fond of this one due to fun with architecture and fun with character interactions. I think I find it interesting that although I can't write without a plot, my favorite bits are usually the bits that aren't relevant to the plot. Huh. By the way, I meant to ask if my explanation in chapter 8 confused anyone. Questions, ask me and I'll try to answer. Drop me a review (seriously, 'I was here' is enough to let me know you care) and make my day, and possibly make me update faster.

Disclaimer: not my characters, not my world, not my quote, but I did make up a lot of the geography in this chapter.

Chapter 9

"I would have gotten worried if I hadn't been worried already."

Steven Brust's _Issola_ pg. 159

The plan was quietly, unobtrusively put into effect the next day. In the end, we'd all decided to avoid long, complicated ideas and gone with the simple plan. Basically, Heero was being lax. Not much more so than normal, just a tid bit of an I'm-not-entirely-paying-attention, if-you-attack-here-now-I-may-not-react-in-time attitude. He hadn't been happy about that decision, but since we couldn't bring any of the other guards in to pretend to be lazy instead, he had to suck it up.

I'd had fun laughing at him until Quatre had smiled and assigned me to do exactly what I'd been doing for the last week: stay at court, in the background, and stare at the Empress. Not entertaining. In fact, dead boring. Actually, it made me wonder if Heero's normal, attentive stance was the act and what he was doing now was closer to reality. I had no idea how he had survived those long, boring years of guard duty without killing someone. Now there was an assassination technique: do nothing and see which of the guards goes postal and kills the Empress for you. Of course, it would take years, possibly centuries. But it might be worth it for the irony value.

From where I was standing in the crowd halfway behind a support column, I could watch the other three guards periodically shoot confused glances at Heero. If nothing else already had, this would probably have tipped me off that he was a squeaky clean guard and the most devoted one I'd ever seen; really all he'd changed was holding his posture not quite as ramrod straight as it could have been, arms a bit too relaxed, gaze wandering slightly at intervals.

Just that and I'd still have bet money at least one of his partners in preventing crime was going to ask him about it later. Luckily, Quatre had had the foresight to give Heero a cover story about not sleeping well after the last attempt on the Empress. And then he could act indignant and angry if anyone asked him if he wanted to take a break. Well, the indignant would be an act; probably not the angry. His rep was going to take a beating from this. I covered a snicker and attempted to act more Teckla-y, since that was how I was dressed today with my braid back to being shoved under my cloak. Joy fun restricted head movement.

The rest of our merry band was also concealed about the room, which actually did make me feel a little better about my sucky job, since misery loves company. Trowa had pulled his disappearing act again; I was amusing myself whenever I got too bored by attempting to find him somewhere in the crowd. I had had zero success so far.

Quatre, as a diplomat, could quite naturally stay near the throne, so that's what he was doing. He was quite happily exchanging pleasantries with anyone who ended up in his general vicinity, which was too disgustingly cheerful given the boringness of the open court so I was mostly avoiding watching him.

Wufei was generally staying out of sight. He wasn't as good at it as Trowa, so every once in a while I'd catch a glimpse of him. Wufei was basically doing the same thing I was, dressing as a Lyorn plaintiff and blending in with the crowd. The difference was, he was moving. I worked better mostly staying in one spot for times like this; moving too much left me distracted since I found the court itself totally uninteresting and would rather try to see how many people I could pull pranks on without them noticing. That talent had come in handy before, since it's hard for guards to chase you when their boots are hooked together. Which wasn't really relevant at the moment since I was supposed to be cooperating with the guards. Well, at least a guard.

Which brought me back to staring at Heero. It really was funny to watch him try to subtly act irresponsible, since Dragons in general are terribly at subtle outside of military campaigns and I don't think Heero had ever been irresponsible in his life. Isn't irony fun? Right now he was staring boredly out at the mass of society in the room. As bored as he was trying to seem, he still either reflexively or intentionally watched the entire room. Maybe both. His eyes would do a kind of sweep over the hall, which I knew let him automatically note who was close enough to reach the Empress in a few seconds and who might possibly be armed or a sorcerer. I knew that's what he was doing because I did it too, was doing it every few seconds now in fact, just for different reasons. He'd learned for his job, I'd learned to survive.

And doesn't that just say something about life?

Several hours came and passed. I was just trying to decide if Heero's subtle boredom was becoming realistic enough for me to bet on it being real and not feigned when the Empress stood up and began her closing speech. _Dammit. I was hoping he'd be desperate by now…_

This scenario had come up in our planning. If I'd been given a job and a guard with a reputation for vigilance above and beyond had suddenly started acting lazy…yeah, I'd've thought trap. And it was a trap. But we didn't want Zechs to think it was a trap. And really the only way to accomplish that was to repeat this often enough to convince him it was real and not fake and he could plan to take the opportunity it presented to attack the Empress.

Which meant I was going to be stuck in open court for a rather long time, possibly even up to and including another full week. _Fuck. I hate this job._

I watched Heero march off with his soldier buddies in a nice diamond formation around the Empress, guarding her as she took the oh-so-dangerous walk from the chair she'd been sitting on to the door behind the platform her throne was on. I'd be jealous that he got to leave and do something else, except that he'd warned us that he would be unavailable to meet up until much later because he generally ended up guarding the Empress' door after court ended. I knew from my own explorations of the palace−I'd done that one while court was in session so the halls were mostly clear−that the hallway the Empress' private rooms were on was even more boring than the audience chamber.

I still wasn't sure if I wanted to mock Heero on principle since he was a guard, or commiserate. I was worried that if this fiasco didn't end soon I'd be commiserating with anyone who had ever had to sit a boring watch in their lives.

Job of actively watching the Empress done for now, I left the audience chamber, slid back into the shadows, and quietly and calmly walked around the front and to the side of the building. It was now time to take preventative measures; I needed to check out the new security.

First and most obvious change: the guard patrols were paying a lot more attention than they had been and there were extra guards in a few places. I almost commended a few of those; the kitchen door, for example, I'd used the get in one evening and now it had its own guard. Glad someone had noticed.

Locks that before had been ornamental were now in use also. That didn't mean much, since I could probably pick anything that didn't have sorcery on it, but I'd discounted a lot of those doors early on because they led to places with either too much traffic or zero access to useful parts of the palace. I could, for example, get into the supply room for the soldier's mess, but it connected to nothing but a delivery area and the mess hall itself and who wants to eat soldier food? Not me.

I was also fairly sure the sorcery alarms on most of the windows had been renewed. Those were harder to tell, since beyond identification, I'd never paid that much attention to straight alarms. When shining a target, if I had to deal with a window someone had alarmed, I was either going to be able to get through it, do the job, and get out quickly enough that the alarm wouldn't matter, or I wasn't and would take the target elsewhere. Or go in through another entrance. This protection business was a total pain in the ass, since I was depending on someone else's actions, not my own. And no one said he had to be logical.

I found several places that either weren't alarmed, possibly because they were deemed inaccessible−boy did I have news for whoever made that decision−, or had spells that I knew had ways to circumvent them. I took the time to trap the ones I thought were actual security risks. A tripwire on this window, rigged to a dart, a spell on that one that would make the outside of the building slippery for several seconds, needles hidden in that grating. All things that were hard to detect if you didn't know to look for them and wouldn't affect anyone on the inside of the building. And anyone on the outside would have bad intentions, since I had to do fun things like hand upside down from a gutter or hang on to ornamental railing with my fingertips to reach those places.

Not inaccessible, just a pain in the ass. Sometimes literally if I leaned on the wrong thing. Damn ornamental railing.

Given all the climbing I had to do, it was good that it had gotten dark by that point, and that my cloak was a dark enough brown to blend. Although anyone really smart would have used sorcery to light up the outside of the palace and prevent problems like me. Although that would probably annoy the people who wanted to sleep. Either way, nice for me, bad for security, which was in a way bad for me, which logic made my head spin so I decided to stop thinking about it.

Perimeter bits done with no mishaps, I climbed up instead of down from my last window adventure, carefully avoiding the scrollwork on the railing around the window, and painstakingly hauled myself onto the roof. This was not a flat roof. It was a slanted tiled roof with very few handholds. Read as: ow.

I did a spell to lighten gravity's affect on me to make things easier; it worked well enough that I was able to drag myself along the tiles with only one heart attack moment when my right hand slipped for a second and I was left dangling by just the left until I managed to find another minute crevice in the tiling and grab on again. I inched up bit by bit, refusing to look down, until instead of another tile, my left hand found the pointy decoration on the peak of the roof. _Son of a bitch! Who the hell is this fond of pointy ornamentation? _I sucked on a cut finger long enough to stop the bleeding and then, after glancing around to make sure no one was looking up, grabbed the not-pointy part of the railing and flipped myself to the other side of the roof.

I stayed put for a moment, both to make sure no one had seen me and to make sure my arms still worked; that stunt took almost more muscle than I had and left my muscles burning in protest. Then I set to eeling down this side of the roof without knocking either a tile or myself off prematurely. When my feet found the edge, I glanced down to make sure no one was below, and then flailed my feet like an idiot until I found some part of the wall to brace them on. Going up is kind of fun. Going down, not so much.

Braced and ready, now I went down the inside wall. I'd specifically picked a wall that led into a garden that no one was using at the moment. The plants here would hit their peak in about three months; until then, it looked scraggly enough that it was unused for official functions or lover's trysts and was out of the way enough that no one just wandered in.

I eventually got low enough to drop, barely managing to avoid landing on something with thorns, which would have been just my luck. Then I simply stood up, walked over, and tried the servant's door leading inside from the garden. It was nicely unlocked, probably because no one bothered to think of assassins already inside their carefully guarded perimeter.

Shows what they know.

I locked the door behind me. This garden was nowhere near the Empress quarters, so it wasn't that much of a security risk, but maybe I'd make someone think twice. _I can't believe I'm helping with security. Gah!_

I stuck my ear to nearby doors to make sure no one was in them, then tried opening each in turn. _Nothing, nothing, nothing, too much information, oh good._ I hauled a tray and cups out of the storage closet I'd just found, pulled my hood down, made my clothes look presentable, and started carrying the wine service like a good Teckla servant. I now had an excuse to go just about anywhere, since no one pays any attention to the help that's actually helping.

I had an okay mental map of the palace layout after the last week of wandering around. I didn't know the corridors I was in specifically, but I knew the general direction I had to go. I ducked my head, scurried as much as possible, and generally acted meek, which isn't all that difficult once you know how to do it; mostly you just need to avoid eye contact with everyone. I passed various people in the hallways, generally actual servants at this time of night. I had to backtrack once, and my on-again-off-again luck decided to be on and no one was around to wonder why a servant didn't know the way to his master's quarters.

I eventually made it to the sector of the palace where the Empress' rooms were located. I then promptly found another garden, ditched my tray and cups in the bushes, pulled my hood back up, and scaled the nearest wall. This section had flatter roofs, which made it easier to walk on them, but also meant I had to work a lot harder to not get spotted.

I tried to stay crouched as close to the roof edge as much as possible, and shift my cloak to disguise my outline so anyone who saw it would think odd piece of architecture rather than person. I scurried across the rooftops, freezing any time I heard a noise. I was both annoyed and relieved when I was incapable of getting closer than two rooftops over. Luckily, the roof I was on was slightly taller than the next one, so I had an okay view.

Both the roof over the Empress' rooms and the neighboring roofs had guards stationed on them, half watching in and half watching out. And someone smart had even told them to ditch the shiny gold I'm-a-Phoenix-Guard-so-don't-mess-with-me cloaks so they weren't totally obvious. In order to get as close as I did, I pretty much had to lie on the far side of the roof, out of line-of-sight of the guards, and cling as I scooted.

When I'd gotten as close as I could, I found a nice chimney, braced myself next to it so I could just barely see over the top of the roof, pulled my cloak around me so only my eyes showed, and became a lump on the wall. It was a better spot than I'd had in the past. One memorable night, I'd ended up hiding in a bush. It was cold, damp, and the damn branches had poked me no matter how I shifted; I'd been exhausted and sore as hell the next day. At least this time I was next to a source of warmth, even if my butt was already starting to hurt from the stone tiling.

I'd had the forethought to put some strips of dried gammon in my belt pouch, and I pulled them out now to quietly munch. With the time it had taken me to survey the outside of the palace, trap the bits that needed it, and squirrel my way across the roofs, it was now about an hour past the usual dinner time. I could wait to eat until I got back to the office (I wasn't foolish enough to think I might get home any time in the near future, at least not for long enough to cook), but I didn't have to, so why bother? One of the perks of working independently, I got to decide my mealtimes.

The guards down there, all…four on the roof and four−no wait five, there was one almost out of my line of sight trying to be inconspicuous in that bush over there, and who the hell needs a garden that huge anyway−on the ground had probably had to eat an early dinner since they were on duty and their nice little legal job had rules against eating while guarding. Good rules in theory, since it's hard to defend when holding food in your hand (unless throwing it at your opponent distracts them long enough for you to kill them), but I'd rather have guards that might possibly have to throw food to defend themselves than have guards that were thinking about their stomachs instead of their job.

Moot point since they'd probably already eaten. And actually, it looked like the guy on the roof closest to me was discreetly chewing. Go him, be a rebel. Another reason to hate open court, I may be on my own time but in order to blend in I couldn't eat in there anyway.

Heero definitely couldn't, since he was on a nice platform in plain view. But he'd probably grabbed something…well, shit. I thought about that for a second as I gazed across the roof and down. If he was on duty in front of the Empress' door like he said he'd be, when would he have gotten dinner? Was he eating with the Empress? Somehow I doubted that he'd unbend long enough to sit down when he was supposed to be on guard, much less eat. He probably hadn't eaten at all. And I'd bet the Empress never noticed. Just another reason to hold nobility in contempt, I supposed.

And because of Dragon pride, the idiot would never say anything. Well, I probably wouldn't either. But then I would never be caught dead−or alive, for that matter−in a guard position. Unless I was setting up to shine someone, but that's different. That's blending in, not doing a career.

I absentmindedly tucked some of the gammon back into my pouch. I had done research on the guard shifts here in case I needed to either impersonate a guard (not likely, since Phoenix Guards were basically exclusively Dragons and Dzur, and I can't really pass for either of those) or avoid the guards during sneaking. The latter had come in handy already. It was possible that with the heightened security the timing of the change of the guards wasn't the same as it had been, but I doubted it. Changing the times would mess up the nice, neat order the guards had going, and they wouldn't want to jeopardize that.

So the next guard change was in−I checked the Orb−two and a half hours. Hurry up and wait, that was my job description right now. When all this was over, I was seriously going to have a reckoning with Marevin.

I spent lots of time amusing myself with various ideas of how to express my displeasure with this assignment as time passed. I decided that, although the irony was nice, training a jhereg from the egg so it would eat his face off would take too long to be really practical. I bounced ideas around and was musing on the possibility of tying him down and forcing him to watch open court for the next few decades without a break when the guard finally changed.

I had to give them credit, they were smart enough to do it in stages and not all at once. The people on the roof got relieved first. And the cheating bastards didn't bother to climb and just levitated their way up from the nice, pretty balconies the rooms over in that area had. Then new guards came into the garden and swapped out with the people there.

There was no way to tell when the new indoor guards arrived. Since that could be important later, I checked the time and made a mental note to ask Heero the next time I saw him. _Which might be very soon…_ A figure had come out one of the side doors of the garden and was winding its way through the amazingly nonlinear paths of the garden courtyard. Something about the ramrod-straight posture and pissed-off stride made me think it was Heero.

He looped through the outside edge of the garden, nodding to the guard he passed on the way, and went back in the other side of the building. I considered for a second, then carefully and slowly slid down the far side of my roof, glanced below to make sure there were no people, and dangled over the side. My toes found the top of a window, and I used the purchase to scoot until I could grab a bit of protruding brick. From there I did a very odd wiggle twist that I was really glad no one was around to see and managed to get to a point where I could peek in the window. The coast was clear and there were no alarms, sorcerous or otherwise, so I jimmied the lock and dropped into the hallway.

I schooled my features into "harried Teckla servant" and trotted off in the direction I'd seen Heero go. I probably wouldn't have found him if he hadn't been waiting in the hallway I'd seen him go into from the garden. "So you did go outside so I'd spot you. I'd wondered," I said.

"Of course." And he turned and started walking, so I followed. Lackage of conversation or not, this was definitely more interesting than anything else that'd happened all day. And actually, if we were talking and ran into anyone else in the hall it could be really bad, so conversation wasn't really in the cards at the moment anyway.

Heero took two right turns, a left, and went out the door into another deserted garden that I hadn't seen before, and I'd been all over the palace. I glanced around and made sure we were totally alone. "How the hell many gardens does this place have?"

Heero snorted. "I stopped keeping track after six. There is also supposed to be an entire town hidden in one of the wings, but I have yet to actually find it. Nothing happened today," he said, throwing me for a second with the sudden topic shift.

"Ah, no. It was really really boring; I have no idea how you put up with that all the time. Oh yeah, were you on duty guarding the Empress' rooms again?" Bit of a duh question actually, since he'd come outside when the new guards showed up.

He nodded, then had to reach up to shove the hair back from where it had fallen into his eyes.

"Then you didn't get dinner. Hang on." I dug back into my pouch and held out the dried gammon I hadn't eaten. "It's not much, but I'm surprised you're not chewing on your sword hilt. Food is _important_," I complained as Heero hesitantly took the meat and bit off a piece. "Skipping meals is the sign of a deranged mind." I pulled a face. "I don't think much of that Empress of yours if she doesn't bother to notice you're not eating."

Heero glared a real glare at me, an I'm-actually-mad-at-you kind instead of the usual don't-talk-to-me-or-I'll-kill-you kind. "She guards the Empire. We guard her. Our personal well-being is our own business."

"O-kay,I get it! Shutting up." I flung my hands up and backed up a bit. Mental note to self, do not say anything bad about the Empress near Heero. Or be very well armed if you need to. _He's kinda cute when he's angry, though…shut up, brain!_ I couldn't resist throwing out a muttered, "You should still be eating, though."

Heero didn't reply.

But he did keep eating the jerky.

I jumped back to the previous topic because it seemed safer. "We planned for nothing happening. It was a pretty good assumption that we'd have to give time for things to feel normal." I leaned on a tree and shoved my bangs back. "I am _not_ looking forward to more court duty. At least you get paid. Well, I get paid too. But not for the court. I should charge extra for that if I can." I looked over at Heero and he was staring at me. Probably because I was babbling again. "Sorry. Did you have something specific to talk to me about? You were waiting for me."

He stared past me at the tree. "…No."

"Then why did you wait?"

"You followed. Did you have something you wanted to ask me?" That wasn't actually an answer, which was interesting.

"Well, I wanted to hand you food. Food is good. Questions…ah, sort of," I said, remembering my mental note from earlier. "Has the extra security changed the guard routines at all as far as timing goes?"

"No. The duration of shifts has been the same since the Phoenix Guards were created and it was chosen to be a fair division of time and labor. A threat to security simply requires more personnel."

"And none of you ever thought that might be a security problem on its own because of predictability? Never mind. If the plan works it won't matter, I just wanted to know so I wouldn't suddenly bump into guards coming on or off duty when I wasn't expecting it."

"How close did you get?" Heero asked.

"To the Empress' rooms? Two roofs over. If I'd been in the building, I doubt I'd have gotten nearly that far."

"Then the security is adequate."

That was a bit hard to argue with. I wished I could fiddle with the end of my braid, but it wouldn't be worth it to pull it out only to have to shove it back down behind my cloak. I poked at some lichen on the tree instead. Silence reigned for a minute. "I should get back," I said.

"Yes."

Heero and I stared at each other. He really did have nice eyes. Such an intense blue, and always completely focused on whatever he was looking at, which right now was…me. _And now is _not_ the time to be thinking about that._ I blinked and hauled myself up off my tree. "I'll see you tomorrow," I said. I turned to go back the way we came and stopped. "Heero, are these hallways always deserted?"

"Not necessarily."

"Damn." Without Heero, that made the walk back a bit too dangerous. When I was with him, no one would have stopped us or thought twice about a guard with a servant. But I didn't have my nice, handy tray and cups now and there was too much chance someone would question my presence. "Roofs it is," I sighed. I eyed them, picked the one on the right and headed over. "If I ever find out who decided all those pointy railings were a nice touch, I'm going to go kill them," I muttered. There were more of the damn things in this section. I scaled the wall as quietly and quickly as possible and looked back to see Heero watching. I saluted to acknowledge him and then started working my way back to the roof I'd been on before. I had until dawn before the Empress got up for private audiences, which were so well guarded it was fucking ridiculous, and I could go rest.


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: I have another reviewer who knows this world! Yay! And I kind of miss Loiosh too; the extra set of banter is just awesome. But to me at least, having a loose jhereg around doesn't quite fit with this set of characters, so I left him or any type of analogue out. I've also never been quite able to see Heero as an assassin, even though it's almost Episode Zero cannon. I can see soldier, but not assassin. Not quite sure why. Anyway, in regards to this chapter...please no one kill me? If the cliffie is that painful, review and explain why and I might spit the next chapter out sooner.

Disclaimer: not my characters, world, or quote.

Chapter 10

"'Clever will only get you so far.'"

Steven Brust's _Dragon_ pg. 271

I woke up and it took me a minute to orient myself. I was in my room, where I'd crashed this morning because I was heartily sick of sleeping in closets, under bushes, or on roofs. Or at the office, but that was for slightly different reasons. I decided it was weird that what should have been a familiar ceiling made me feel disoriented. When all this was over, I was really going to need to take a few days off and just get used to being at home again.

A quick time-check put it at the ninth hour of the morning, which left me with enough time to shower, eat, find clothing, and haul my ass back to the palace for day two of wait-for-the-other-guy-to-do-something. Which really sucked. I'd already counted all the ceiling tiles. Twice.

I spent slightly longer than I should have luxuriating in the hot water and the chance to wash my hair. It took a good chunk of time, mostly because it was a bitch to comb out and keep untangled long enough to braid, and having enough free time was a rarity lately. I did a quick drying spell on my hair while I was still in the bathroom because drippy wet hair is just not fun, and when I got out I scrambled for clothes and ended up hauling on nondescript grey trousers and the white shirt and pale blue vest of a Tiassa. If anyone talked to me today I got to expound upon brilliant and improbable ideas until their eyes glazed and they went away.

I didn't bother pulling my braid out of my shirt when I pulled it on; leaving it there wouldn't impede my head movement any more than the cloak, which I swung over my shoulders next, and it would help hide my hair. I also rubbed a bit of ash into my cheeks to change the outline of my face, since I was getting worried that even with the clothing changes someone would eventually put two and two together and recognize me. The ash trick was not one of my favorites, it made my face feel grimy for one thing, but it did work and it was easy. In my life, utility generally beat out comfort without any actual competition.

Rummaging through the cupboards unearthed some bread and cheese this time, not too stale, and I made a quick sandwich to take with me. I went ahead and teleported straight from the apartment to the palace courtyard. Yet again, the gods had ignored my pleas that they smite the tacky décor so the statuary in the area was still eye-catching and tasteless. Munching my sandwich, I people-dodged my way up to the stairs and inside.

I went and found a new spot from which to watch the dais, per usual. Staying in one place too long would draw attention. I did, also per usual, make sure I was next to something to lean on since I was going to be here for way too fucking long. This time it was an ugly piece of statuary depicting some past Emperor or another on the right side of the room about twelve feet from the dais. You'd think these people would find better things to spend their money on.

I'd arrived about five minutes before the Empress was due to arrive; someone, somewhere, had decided it was safer to put people in the audience chamber and then have the Empress walk in than to do it the other way around. I had no idea why, since both ways had the end result of the Empress in a room with a bunch of untrustworthy people and the same number of guards.

Actually, like yesterday, there were still a few more guards than there should have been around the sides of the room. Fat lot of good they'd do if someone jumped the Empress from right by the throne area, but maybe it made them feel better.

Five minutes of fidgeting went by fairly quickly, which I hoped was going to be a good omen for the rest of the day. When she performed her sedate guarded march in, the Empress was, per usual, dressed ridiculously in a gold dress that probably cost more than I made in three jobs. Let's hear it for class divisions.

Heero was in his usual place as Empress Relena called the court to order and began hearing complaints, requests, bitching, etc for the day. I made a guess that Quatre had given him acting pointers, because today he was gradually sliding into his lax role, starting out alert and over the course of the first five or so plaintiffs sliding into what he'd been doing yesterday. It looked a lot more natural this way, and I made a mental note to thank Quatre if I saw him again.

If we all survived. Between Heero's better acting and an assassin's sense that opportunities should be taken before they were missed, my instincts were telling me that there was a pretty good chance that something would happen today. And since I wasn't dead yet, my instincts were usually pretty good.

I discreetly started periodically scanning the room for my fellow watchers, on the off chance I could possibly tell someone I had an itch about today and maybe see if they concurred. Well, and because I was bored and intelligent conversation would be nice. But honestly, my main motivation was the job. Seriously.

Quatre was still by the dais where there was no way in hell I could get over to talk to him. Heero was out without any consideration at all; _no one _talked to on-duty guards, especially not in the throne room. Outside the street entrances to the palace, it could actually be kind of fun to heckle the guards because they weren't allowed to react in any way unless there was an actual threat. Personal insults apparently didn't count. Of course, if they found you when they were off duty and they knew it was you who'd harassed them, then you were in trouble. I wondered what Heero would do if someone ever heckled him. It probably had never happened before, given the no-talking-to-the-guards-in-the-throne-room rule. Probably just ignore them, since reacting is outside optimal behavior, but I was pretty sure he'd still get annoyed. _Bet he's cute when he's annoyed too…okay, it's time to _stop_ that train of thought!_

I yanked my mind back on track and tried to find Wufei or Trowa. I had no idea where Trowa had been yesterday, and I had no more luck trying to spot him today. The man just disappeared, it was annoying. And I was jealous. I was definitely going to have to ask how he did that.

I finally did manage to spot Wufei, but he was on the other side of the hall inconspicuously lurking behind a group of Teckla. Fat lot of good that was going to do me any time soon. I could slowly make my way over there, but to avoid notice it would have to be slow. I weighed pros and cons and decided to just stay still. Yes, I had a hunch, but it could turn out to mean nothing and I didn't want to blow my cover for no reason and possibly have to watch open court from the rafters or something equally fun in the future. Actually, the rafters might be more comfortable…_Should have thought of that before. Although it would make it difficult to act quickly if I needed to…damn._ I reluctantly discarded the thought. Being on the ground was too much more convenient.

The next hour dragged. Wufei never crossed to my side of the hall. I decided that he had to be doing it intentionally, probably so our little group had the Empress ringed somewhat evenly. Quatre was on the same side as Wufei and Heero was on my side. The gods only knew where Trowa was. I did manage to catch Heero's eye at one point and I tried to give him a 'I think shit might go down soon, be ready' look, but I couldn't tell if he managed to read it or not.

After a second hour, I was wishing something would happen. Apparently the gods decided to listen and answer in their usual way.

Which translates as, the way most likely to get me killed.

The two Orca currently arguing over shipping rights (politely, of course) had me actually half-listening to the conversation because I'd discovered it was actually kind of fun to award points to see who was winning the debate. It was seven-three to the guy on the right, mostly due to use of rhetorical questions whenever the other guy accused him of anything, when I had a split-second warning tingle before a blast of sorcery slammed everyone standing within fifteen feet of the dais back into a sudden heap. I was within the blast radius and was thrown sideways straight into the statue I'd been leaning on.

I scrambled up and dove towards the dais. The crowd behind me was going into hysterics, which, combined with the dazed people on the ground, was blocking any guards not in the immediate vicinity from getting to the Empress.

The back of my mind analyzed the situation as I moved. Everyone on the dais was unaffected by the sorcery blast, including the guards; probably the sorcery protections were even stronger up there. I still didn't see Trowa, but it was obvious that Quatre, who'd been closer to the dais than me, had been tossed way off to the side. He was moving, but further away than I was since he hadn't had a nice, handy statue to break his fall and half-cripple him. Wufei'd been out of the blast radius, but that meant he was starting from about as far back as Quatre was now.

There were three people still standing in front of the stage area, all in dark colors. _Goddammit, how'd they get so close?_ One had to be the sorcerer, but I wasn't sure which it was since all three were holding conventional weapons, two with swords, one with wicked looking daggers.

I could, and probably should, have slammed straight into the man closest to me and killed him before he had a chance to realize I was there, but as I ran I realized that the man on the far left with his hood up and holding daggers was Zechs. My original target. I had a split second to decide, and I changed my angle to aim for him. This was his operation, he probably had rigged the planning so he would be the one to actually make the attempt on the Empress.

And I _really_ wanted to kill him.

As a compromise for passing up free shots at the two guys closer to me, I threw a few sharp, pointy objects in their direction as I shot past and hoped Heero was up to the challenge.

Some instinct had me ducking and rolling just in time, as something nasty buzzed over my head. I cursed and abandoned my impromptu plan and spun back and faced the two men I'd passed. The one closest was facing me, holding his sword in his left hand, and making casting motions with his right. My concentration narrowed and I ducked right just in time to miss something else nasty aimed my way.

I dug my feet in and threw myself forward as I pulled a dagger from the back of my neck with my right hand. I slashed forward, twisting to avoid the sword swiping at me, and felt my right leg nearly give. I must have hit my side pretty badly on the statue earlier. I fell and rolled past the very surprised sorcerer and whacked my head on the dais, which was much closer than I'd thought. I shoved myself up against it quickly, ignoring the new ache in my head that added to the ache in my right side, and kept my dagger between me and my opponent.

During my roll I'd had a chance to get a look at the other people in the area. Heero was dueling with the guard on the right and Wufei was matching blades with Zechs. I really hoped Trowa was working his psychic mojo from wherever he was, although I wasn't going to bank on him finishing in time to help. The Empress and the other three Phoenix Guards were gone, probably out the back entrance. Points to whoever thought enough to get her out of danger.

I pulled a second dagger with my left hand and got ready to move when the man in front of me stopped in the middle of a spellcasting gesture, teetered, and fell with a dagger sticking out of his back. Quatre stood behind him in a defensive posture.

I spun right, giving Quatre a small salute as I did, and dove toward Wufei and Zechs. My right leg decided to hold, which was good since I'd decided to ignore it no matter what its opinion was, and in half a second I was close enough to help. Unfortunately, Zechs noticed my arrival and backstepped so I couldn't get him boxed between Wufei and myself.

Zechs flipped his left-hand dagger into a backwards hold and slid into a defensive posture. I realized then that he had to fight. The teleport blocks on this room made a quick escape impossible, and because of the panicked masses of people currently blocking the exits trying to run out them, he couldn't just take off on foot. This was likely to be extremely ugly.

Wufei went in with an overhead sword stroke, and I paralleled with a low dagger cuts on the left. Zechs managed to block Wufei's strike and one of mine and eel away from the other. He was fast.

I threw my left dagger underhand at his head, not because I actually thought it would connect since actually hitting anything with a thrown weapon is mostly chance if the target has the ability to dodge, but to make him duck. Pretty much everyone ducks if something sharp and pointy gets aimed at their head. _Speaking of, shit!_ My left knee hit the floor as I got my head out of the way of a return dagger and I again just barely prevented my right leg from giving out on me.

I dodged another strike aimed at me not quite quickly enough and got a shallow cut along my left side. I swore like an Orca sea-trader as I got my guard back up and then swore more happily when I saw Wufei'd taken the opening I'd given him and Zechs was now bleeding from a good cut to his left side.

It didn't occur to me until later to thank the gods that I hadn't gotten hit by a Morganti blade. Maybe Zechs had decided taking one of those into the palace was too much risk. Damned if I know the real reason, but whatever caused that decision probably saved my soul; just a nick with a Morganti blade is enough to kill.

From the corner of my eye, I spotted the guards from the sides of the room, finally making through the crowd towards our fight. _Cavalry's fucking late, per usual!_ Wufei and I kept up our dance with Zechs, holding him in place. _And if those guards will just get over here and−son of a bitch!_ The guards weren't aiming at Zechs, they were heading at all three of us in this little area. The fastest guard was going to reach us in seconds, he had his sword out, and it didn't look like he was intending to help me. _Of all the times for them to catch on to the fact that house colors do not mean a member of that house!_

I couldn't finish my job if I was dead. "Hey!" I yelled to warn Wufei as I yanked another dagger with my left hand and angled well enough to theoretically defend from both Zechs and any overenthusiastic guard. Of course, theory isn't everything. "Dammit!" I hit the floor for the who-knows-how-many-it-was time today to avoid the broadsword the overenthusiastic guard swung at my head. Daggers to block a blade that heavy, not so much.

I scrambled back up in time to see Zechs taking the opportunity presented by the fact that the guards had forced both 'Fei and me to break off the fight to run like hell for the exit. _Son of a fucking bitch, I hate my life!_ I dove _again_ in order to duck under the closest guard's blade, slam my right foot into his hamstring on the way past so he wouldn't turn and spit me, and take off running again after Zechs.

"_TROWA!" _I mentally yelled as loud as I could, hoping his skill would make up for my lack of concentration.

"_I got it,"_ he answered and I nearly fell with relief. I shoved through the crowd, hoping no guards were climbing up by back. In front of me, Zechs broke through the last of the crowd that hadn't already abandoned the area and made it out the door.

"_Zechs's going to teleport when he makes it out of the block! Where's he going?"_

"_A warehouse in South Adrilankha. Here's the location."_ I forced myself to concentrate enough to receive a picture of the place.

"_Make sure Wufei makes it out without getting arrested!"_ I threw at him as I broke through the crowd too and made it through the front door.

"_Duo, wait!" _Trowa yelled, but it was too late. I threw myself down the steps with as little control as possible and flung myself into a teleport. Damned if I was letting that bastard get away. This was ending now.


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: Because snowdragonct left me the best review ever (I have that particular reaction to cliffies myself!), I'm getting this out today instead of tomorrow. To the reader who asked about Heero: that'd be next chapter. To everyone: sorry about the shortness, this is where I had to break it. Please don't kill me again? Also, violence warning.

Disclaimer: not my characters, not my world, not my quote.

Chapter 11

"'Good. I had a thought. All I had to do was combine thought with opportunity and I'd have something else: a chance.'"

Steven Brust's _Dragon_ pg. 269

In retrospect, I thought as my knees buckled and I landed on an unfamiliar street, South Adrilankha made almost perfect sense. It was the Easterner's side of town, so most Dragaerans never came to the area. It made a damn good hiding place.

There was absolutely no one in the general area, I noted as I shoved myself up again and ran toward the warehouse I'd seen in my head. The lack of people, Easterners or Dragaerans, made sense if someone bleeding with a naked weapon had dropped straight into the street right before I had. And hey, I fit the bleeding-with-a-naked-weapon description too, so anyone that hadn't bugged out when Zechs popped in had probably done it immediately when I showed up.

I slid on the ground a bit and looked down to see a blood trail going toward the warehouse. Seedy and falling down, it wasn't exactly a place I'd spend a lot of time, but then I wasn't stupid enough to purposely try to start a house war either. I did a quick mental poke and found a teleport block up around the place for both incoming and outgoing people. The door proved to be locked but not barred. I sheathed my daggers, yanked a pick and a torsion wrench out of my hair, and had the lock open in a second.

I pocketed both thin pieces of metal rather than take the time to make them stay in my braid, pulled out my daggers again, said a quick prayer, and dove through the door. If I survived this, I was going to have massive bruising on my shoulders the next day, I reflected.

Diving turned out to be a good plan, as something nasty shot by over my head and impacted the door. Apparently I'd made too much noise coming in. Story of my life, and hence why I knew to duck.

"Son of a bitch!" I spit out as I got upright and realized there were two people in the room and not one. Trowa's original job had been to find Zechs's boss. I'd asked him where Zechs had gone. Apparently the two answers were the same.

"In over your head, aren't you boy?" the taller of the two men said. Unlike Zechs and I, he was actually wearing the Jhereg house colors since he hadn't been undercover in a room full of Phoenix Guards. The black trousers and grey tunic were silk, and I would have put them at very expensive. His ginger hair was neatly combed back in a way that made me want to jump this guy just to see if I could mess up his appearance. This was the boss. And I'd just run in without backup.

Oh shit.

"I'll leave you two to it then," he said, and turned and walked out the back way. I let him go; I couldn't stop him and he wasn't my target anyway. I did take a split second to pull a trickle of power from the Orb and throw a hope and a prayer after him.

Unfortunately, that split second almost got me spitted. I twisted aside just in time to avoid that and took a deep gash along my left side instead to match the shallow one I'd taken earlier. I could feel the blood trickling down and began worrying about bloodloss.

"You shouldn't have gotten involved," Zechs remarked as he pulled back to circling distance. His hood was down now and I had to wonder why the hell he didn't pull his hair back since it was almost as long as mine. Also white. Made me wonder if he'd had a sorcery accident at a young age, but I was a bit too busy trying not to die to ask.

"Like I had a choice," I shot back. I calculated odds. Both of us had bad side wounds, but mine was new and bleeding freely and Zechs had had a chance to bandage his while I'd been picking the door lock. I could try to keep him talking long enough for help to show, but everyone else was probably tied up with the guards and I wasn't sure I had that much time.

"I never thought the council would go so far as to hire an assassin expressly to protect the Empress," he said conversationally as he feinted high, slashed low with the other hand, and came back to stab at my head. I caught the feint enough to ignore it, blocked the slash, and took a cut across my cheek while I returned a cut to his wrist.

"Yeah, well, I never thought anyone would be dumb enough to purposely start a war!" I scrambled back, trying to keep tabs on the walls and the various packing crates scattered around the room.

"I suppose we are even, then."

I dodged another few slashes and thanked the gods he had daggers like I did and not a sword. I also mentally damned the council members to wander at Deathsgate for all eternity; Zechs was much better with a blade than any of the information they'd given me had indicated. If he'd had a longer reaching blade, I would've been dead already.

I saw an opening and took it, planting my right dagger in Zechs' left shoulder, yanking it out again in the same motion. He shouted and ignored the pain enough to take the open shot at my head. I got my left dagger up quickly enough to deflect the blade, by the hilt cracked against the side of my head.

I yelled and fell backwards as the world spun around me. I landed on the remains of a splintered crate and rolled to avoid getting spitted. I came up in one of the places I'd been trying to avoid, an almost u-shape created by the large boxes. As injured as I was, I wasn't going to be able to jump over them and trying to get through the narrow gaps between them would leave me wide open.

I tried to stand and nearly fell over. It seemed like time had slowed down. Zechs was still two paces away from me, outside of striking distance. My left arm wasn't working properly anymore. I needed to stand before I got killed, so I slammed my left-hand dagger into the packing crate next to me and used it to lever myself up just in time, leaving it imbedded in the wood because I didn't have the strength to pull it out again.

I clumsily parried the cut aimed at me, somehow keeping it from connecting at all. My vision was starting to fuzz. Zechs seemed to be swaying on his feet too, and I was glad to know I'd managed to do enough damage myself that he'd need a healer. If I was really lucky, after he killed me he wouldn't have time to get to a healer and would die of bloodloss. Of course, his boss would probably just have him revivified and none of this would be over.

Except it would for me, because I'd be dead.

I stumbled backwards, leaning on the crate with my left hand and praying I wouldn't trip over anything because I knew I wouldn't make it up again. I was about to die, and I was most pissed off because I'd gone through all this trouble and fixed absolutely nothing. The boss had walked out the back. He'd had his attempt on the Empress, which hopefully someone else could keep from becoming a war. I didn't know if all my friends were still alive. I wasn't even going to get a chance to finalize Zechs.

I somehow managed to back into one of the gaps between boxes without running into any of them or getting spitted. My swings were getting feebler, and I was starting to pick up shallow cuts along my right arm from where I got my arm in the way and not my dagger. My vision was fading to red.

I tripped and fell sideways when the crate I was supporting myself on suddenly ended. I thought I was done then, but instead of hitting the ground I ran into the wall and used the unexpected support to stay upright enough to jerk away from the dagger about to plant itself in my side.

Zechs staggered too as he backed up to swing at me again and I was even more angry that I'd gotten this close to ending the entire damn situation only to lose at the end. I was using both arms to keep myself from sliding down the wall and neither wanted to hold for long.

I was angry. I was tired. I was dying. _Fuck this. I'm not going down alone._ Zechs aimed his dagger at my heart. My left hand skidded down the wall as blood from my side made it more slippery and I dropped sideways a few inches. Being off-kilter almost felt right with the way my head was spinning. I raised my right arm still clutching my single dagger as much as I could, shoved off the wall, grabbed his arm with my left hand as well as I could, and pulled. Neither of us was strong enough to stand once thrown off balance, and we fell into each other.

My only thought was _Oh good_ as I realized I had actually managed to get my right arm to cooperate enough to put my dagger in line with Zechs' head. The point hit his chin, and momentum from collision with me and then the floor slammed it home.

Through some freak occurrence of gravity, I ended up face up and not face down. I didn't have the strength to lift my head and look, but the pain and difficulty breathing told me Zechs' last strike had missed my heart and instead taken my lung. I stared up as the red-misted ceiling faded to black.

Just before I was gone completely, I thought I heard someone calling my name.


	12. Chapter 12

A/N: Just so everyone knows, the best way to make me update faster is to write a review that makes me chuckle. So, this chapter: yes, the timeline just backed up and switched to Heero's POV. Blame Heero; I'd had no intentions of doing this, but then I got here and he just wanted to talk. This should answer the question about what Heero was doing when stuff happened. I kind of feel like this chapter needs more to it, so let me know what you think.

Disclaimer: not my characters, not my world, not my quote.

Chapter 12

"War consists of missed opportunities alternating with narrow escapes, and it usually ends when someone, somewhere, fails to commit a timely error."

Steven Brust's _Dragon_ pg. 228

Standing around in the audience chamber when expecting something to happen turned out to be more aggravating than standing around when expecting absolutely nothing to happen. Especially since the plan required me to act as if I weren't paying complete attention. I hoped I was doing a convincing job, because not paying attention did not come naturally to me.

Quatre had told me to ease into it today to avoid looking contrived. I was actually a bit glad for that advice; acting properly to begin with turned out to be helpful when I had to switch postures. Slumping a bit was not the most comfortable position I could be in for long periods of time, as I had figured out yesterday. Starting from a more comfortable way of standing helped me find a better balancing point.

And a better way of positioning my arms so I could still draw my sword quickly.

The most difficult part of this charade was turning out not to be acting as if I were bored. That part was easy. I was bored. I just had to stop hiding it. The most difficult part was acting bored while still paying attention. My unfocused and wandering gaze had to still take in all the possible dangers in the room while not seeming to.

I now had a whole new appreciation for actors.

Nothing seemed to be different from the day before as the hours dragged on and I stifled the usual urge to either tug at my hemline or adjust my cloak. The only odd occurrence was a look from Duo that I was sure was directed at me when my eyes wandered over to him once. I was unsure about what exactly he was trying to tell me, so I took it as a general warning and stayed alert.

I resisted the urge to start counting columns. I already knew how many there were in the room from a day I had not been able to resist temptation. Although I should have expected seventeen, given the significance the number holds in society.

I also resisted counting the number of Teckla in the room. I wanted something to either happen if it was going to, or not happen if it was not. Trying to stay wary while acting lax and expecting an assassination attempt at any time was like trying to sit still after drinking six cups of klava. Not easy or what could be considered fun.

But at least it wasn't boring.

An hour or so later I had just one second to be glad of forewarning and feel sorry for my fellow guardsmen who didn't have any as a sorcerous wind blasted everything and everyone within fifteen feet of the dais back into the rest of the crowd. Three men dressed in black were still standing within the blast radius and all were armed and threatening. I drew my sword and moved between the Empress and the attackers.

I hand-signaled the other guards to remove the Empress from the room and moved forward to engage the closest threat. I kept half my attention on the group retreating off the back of the dais. One or more of the enemy was a sorcerer and could definitely strike at a distance. The good news was, if Duo's interpretation of motive was correct, death by sorcery was probably not going to be dramatic enough for the scenario. And the Orb should easily be able to protect Relena from that kind of attack.

By the time I reached the front edge of the dais, the Empress had reached the back. I dropped down to the floor and flung up my blade to block a chop at my head. I shoved back hard enough to make my opponent stumble and gain myself a bit of breathing room. A quick glance backward left me relieved when I saw the door out just sliding closed. The Empress was safe. A glance right showed Duo engaged with one enemy and Wufei fighting with the other one.

I stepped forward to gain more foot room and prepared to duel in earnest. My opponent made no move to use sorcery as we traded blows. In the back of my mind, I worried a bit about who might be dealing with the sorcerer who had cleared the area, but I had no time to consciously think about it.

The Jhereg I was dueling was good. I was better, but not by much. When that became clear, he drew a dagger with his left hand. I still had the reach advantage, with a broadsword against a shortsword, but one weapon against two could be difficult.

He feinted with his left hand, I shifted to cover it while striking for his head. He parried with the sword and struck at my right arm with the dagger. I dodged and took the opportunity to slide my blade past his guard and give him a cut to the shoulder. He cried out and fell back, giving me another brief chance to assess the rest of the room.

The chaos caused by panicking civilians was preventing the plainclothes guards from the crowd and the uniformed guards at the entrance of the audience chamber from reaching the front of the room. Quatre seemed to have just knifed Duo's opponent in the back. Less than honorable, but justified in the circumstances. Wufei was still dueling with his opponent.

I attacked once more, pressing the assassin back towards the crowd. If I could not finish him off soon, eventually one of the guards trapped by the crowd would have to make it through and would then have a perfect shot of his back.

For not the first time, I wished I had more training with combat sorcery. I had never had much aptitude with it, but in a fight like this being able to immobilize or simply kill my opponent quickly and without touching him would be very handy.

The two of us clashed blades repeatedly. I continued to attempt to force him back, but he seemed to catch on and circled right instead.

Which nicely put him in position for Quatre to back-shot. Which he did. The Issola looked at me apologetically as my opponent fell. I gave him a half-shrug in return and looked over at Wufei's side of the fight just in time to see that the blocked guards had finally broken through on that side and were indiscriminately attacking Duo and Wufei.

"Dammit!" I ground out and broke into a run.

Before I could truly get anywhere, the hooded assassin broke away into the crowd and Duo ran after him. Wufei parried a strike from one guard as two others attempted to follow Duo.

I got between Wufei and the guards in time to block a strike that probably would have killed him. "Stop," I said with as much authority as I could muster. "This man and the one in Tiassa colors were specially commissioned to protect the Empress due to the recent assassination attempt."

"Why," the guard in front of me started.

I cut him off. "Please direct questions to the Lord Quatre." Hopefully Quatre wouldn't kill me later for putting him on the spot like that. Blades had been lowered and it looked as if Wufei was safe, so I sheathed my blade, turned, and took off after Duo.

The crowd had mostly dispersed, so I reached the door fairly quickly. And saw nothing. Some blood spatter on the ground caught my eye, and I followed it halfway down the stairs before it vanished. I cursed and took off back up the stairs.

"_Trowa!"_ I called mentally, immediately searching for him as soon as I was back inside the doors.

"Here," he said as he melted out of the shadows to the right of the door.

"Where did Duo go?" I demanded.

"He went after Zechs." That startled me a bit; I hadn't known that the assassin Wufei and Duo had been fighting was Zechs. "He went without backup."

"Take me there. Now."

Trowa nodded and, moving faster than I'd expected, slid out the door and down the steps. I followed. Halfway down, where the blood ended, he reached out and grabbed my arm and I felt the world shift.

I dropped into a defensive stance and scanned our new surroundings. From the run-down condition of buildings and the smell, I knew we were in one of the less reputable areas of Adrilankha. Possibly somewhere near the Easterners' section of the city. One side of the street had apartments, although not the kind I would be willing to live in. The other side housed larger buildings. A few shop-type multi-story tenements and a few warehouses.

There were no people.

Trowa let go of my arm and started striding towards one of the warehouses, one with the door not completely shut. Again, I ran after him, still a bit surprised at how quickly he could move without seeming to be exerting much effort.

A few feet from the door, I hear a thump from inside. I moved in front of Trowa and drew my sword again as quietly as I could. I edged the door open a bit more so I could see and immediately shoved it open the rest of the way.

"Duo!" I yelled as I crossed the distance between the door and the two bodies near the right wall. I shoved the white-haired body out of the way, absently noting the dagger embedded in its chin.

Duo was covered in wounds, the worst of which was a dagger planted in his left side, probably in a lung. There was no pulse. "Dammit!" I pulled the dagger out of Duo's side, then checked him for less obvious wounds. Cuts on his hands and arms, one to the cheek, a light one and bad one to the side. I felt enough swelling around his hip to mean a possible fractured bone, and running my hands lightly over his head revealed a lump that, if Duo were still alive, would have probably caused a concussion.

"Trowa, can you teleport us to my room?" I asked.

"Think about what it looks like."

I picked Duo up as I concentrated on the look and feel of my room specifically, trying not to think too hard about the limp body in my grasp. I held on a bit tighter as the close contact made it even more obvious he wasn't breathing. Trowa nodded, and again the world fuzzed around us and reformed. I set Duo down on the bed and then knelt next to it.

I placed my hand over the hole in his chest and pulled power from the Orb, concentrating on the way blood, bone, muscle, and skin were supposed to be knit together. When I pulled my hand away, the hole was gone. I did the same for each injury, having to pause to regain my focus for each of the last few. The strength might not be directly coming from me, but the concentration was, and a healing mistake could be just as or more fatal than the original injury.

When all obvious wounds were gone, I ran my hands across Duo's lean, muscular frame one more time to try to find any I might have missed. I found none, and so placed my hands on his chest, concentrated, pulled more power from the Orb than I'd pulled for any single injury, and released the spell.

Duo started breathing.

I leaned against the bed in relief. Revivification is not an exact science. Sometimes it fails and no one can tell why. I had learned before I joined the Phoenix Guards how to revivify someone and I was fairly good at it, but I was never quite sure until I was done if it would work.

Trowa's hand on my shoulder brought me back to reality. "If it is safe for him to stay here, I will stay with him. You're probably needed in the audience chamber, Heero."

I glanced over at Duo before I looked back at Trowa and nodded. I wanted to stay and be there when Duo woke, but I still had my duty. They needed me back in the throne room. And I knew I could trust Trowa. I reached for the Orb one more time and teleported myself to the stairs I'd started at.


	13. Chapter 13

A/N: Dear lord Cuzosu, how long did that take to type? (Note here: apparently whatever processor this site uses does not like interrobangs, because it won't let me write one. This is annoying.) Between the longest review I've ever gotten and a bribe of apple pie, I shall spit out a midweek chapter! Sidenote that a review made me realize was probably not clear: head/brain/spine-type damage leads to un-revivifiability because it isn't fixable. Drop me a line, surprise me, make me chuckle, tell me what you thought, tell me you were here. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: not my characters, not my world, not my quote.

Chapter 13

"I'm less insulted than I am confused."

Steven Brust's _Iorich_ pg. 184

It shocked the hell out of me when I opened my eyes. I also immediately regretted it, since even that motion hurt. "Ow," I mumbled and my voice cracked slightly. The grey blur in front of my eyes slowly resolved itself into a ceiling.

"Don't try to move," a familiar, quiet voice said. A cup was pressed to my lips and I swallowed water. Water was good. It was cool and it made my throat feel better. Fatigue was still pulling at me, but so was curiosity. I carefully tilted my head to the left. It hurt. So did breathing. So did being conscious.

"Trowa…?" I murmured.

"Yes. You should go back to sleep." He was sitting in a chair and I seemed to be on a bed.

"Don't wanna. What happened? Where am I?"

He hesitated and looked concerned. "You died."

"Oh. Sorry." That explained why I felt like I'd been mauled by a Dzur. I looked up at the ceiling again. Currently, tilting my head back and forth seemed to be the extent of my abilities. I tried to decide how I felt about being dead. Not too bad this time. It had happened to me before. Once when someone was trying for my territory and the assassin got sort of lucky (only sort of because I still got away and managed to get to someone I trusted before dying) and a few times when I was being warned to back off.

This time I'd died in a fight. I decided I liked that better than waking up knowing I was an example or waking up realizing I almost hadn't seen it coming.

I also decided the ceiling was boring. "This ceiling is boring," I said. Still barely talking over the threshold of audible. Any louder hurt. Well, hurt more.

Trowa snorted. "I don't think Heero looks at it much."

I started and immediately regretted it. My left side felt on fire. When I was done panting from the pain, Trowa gave me another drink of water. I attempted to glare at him, but I think it went over more as a weak stare. "Sorry," he said. "We're currently in Heero's room in the guards' wing. We needed somewhere safe and with a bed to revivify you."

"Who?" I asked. I really hoped they hadn't had Wufei call someone from the Bitch Patrol. For the right money, a sorceress from the Left Hand would definitely tell the Jhereg council everything she knew about this unorthodox little group.

"Heero. Revivification is almost a specialty of his."

I blinked. "Uh…" I said intelligently.

"He isn't called on to use it much."

I just decided to drop it. "Everyone else?"

"No one else died. Heero returned to the audience chamber a few hours ago after bringing you back. Between him and Quatre, Wufei should be able to get out soon if he hasn't managed it already. I believe Wufei has a few minor cuts and Quatre has some bruising from the sorcery."

"You?"

"Stayed out of the fighting. I don't believe anyone but you and the other three know I was there."

"Figures," I said. I shifted slightly, trying to gauge how far I could push my body. Healings help, but only time gets rid of the rest of the hurt. "How bad was I?"

"You actually died from bloodloss and lung damage. There were also many superficial cuts, an injury to your right leg, and a lump on your head."

"Yeah, I think I remember most of that. Lung 'splains why my side hurts so much. Zechs?"

"Dead. Unrevivifiable."

"Oh good. I was hoping that had worked." I hesitated a bit before asking, "Was there anyone else in the warehouse?"

Trowa shook his head. "We didn't look, but I doubt it. His name is Treize, by the way. And since this is all his plan, I doubt that he would be foolish enough to stay in a place where he had been seen."

"Damn. You're right, but damn." I sighed. Technically, I'd finished my contract, but the council was just as likely to blackmail me again if Treize hired another assassin. I had a hope about that though. "Trowa, can you track a sorcery marker?"

"Yes. Now?"

"No. No point in doing it now. Just wanted to make sure it would work. I'll ask you later."

"All right."

I did another personal check; I was feeling slightly better. "Can you help me sit up?"

"Is that a good idea?"

"No. Do it anyway?" Trowa hesitated. "If I'm still on my back and other people come in, I'm going to die again of mortification," I warned.

"I think you're feeling better," Trowa said as he leaned forward and slid an arm under my shoulders. I used my arms to push and he pulled and together we slid me so I was leaning against the headboard of the bed. I just stayed still and panted for a bit until the red haze disappeared from my vision. Then I looked around.

"Forget the ceiling, this entire room is boring."

"I don't think Heero's in here at all much."

It was small. There was a sword rack by the door with nothing on it, a bookshelf to the left of the rack with what looked like war histories on it, a chest near the foot of the bed I was in that probably had clothing in it, and the bed and the chair. "I'm beginning to wonder if he has a life outside of his job at all," I muttered.

Trowa just shrugged. I think because he couldn't deny it and didn't want to confirm it.

I attempted not to fidget, because I was pretty sure that would hurt. I was going to have to get up and move eventually because I couldn't stay in a guard's room permanently, but I was going to ignore that thought as long as I possibly could.

Predictably, my thoughts went the only other direction possible. Back to worrying about everyone else. Heero and Quatre would be fine, but Wufei could get into serious trouble with the guards. About the only thing he had going for him was that he hadn't actually killed anyone. I'd done that. Meaning it was probably a good thing I'd vanished. Hopefully Quatre wouldn't get in trouble for killing that sorcerer, actually. He might be a noble and a diplomat, but he wasn't a guard and I didn't really know the laws about that.

Although, the other guy was revivifiable since he'd avoided a head shot, so maybe it wouldn't matter? And I definitely couldn't stay here for too long. I was pretty sure I could talk my way around the Orb's ability to tell if I was lying since I didn't lie as a general rule anyway, but it's hard to dodge specific questions.

Assuming Heero could talk any angry people out of taking potshots at the Jhereg, this little escapade wouldn't result in a war. But if I ended up in the limelight I personally would still be screwed.

Not knowing the details of what was going on was really bugging me. And it's not like I could get up and go find out.

But I could ask. "Trowa, have you talked to anyone since Heero left?"

"No. I thought they'd be busy."

"How long was I out?"

"About three hours."

"I'm going to try to reach Wufei; if he isn't out of trouble yet, he probably needs help." I didn't close my eyes because I wasn't sure I trusted myself not to fall asleep if I did. I concentrated on Wufei. _"'Fei! You there? Wufei!"_

"_Duo?"_ He sounded a bit incredulous.

"_Yeah. Where are you? Did you make it out all right?"_

Relief came through from his end. _"I'm still in the palace. I found an open eatery to stay at. Are you injured?"_

"_Not anymore. You?"_

"_Not seriously. Who healed you?"_

"_Heero."_ If no one had told Wufei I'd been dead yet, I really didn't want to do it myself. _"No guards questioning you, not in legal danger?"_

"_No. Quatre very politely and convincingly passed you and I off as contracted outside help without ever saying exactly who had contracted us or for what purpose."_

"_Nice. I think I like him. And they bought it?"_

"_Heero backed his story, so yes. The way he phrased things implied that the Empress knew about us."_

"_Oh. That should nicely shut people up for a bit. We should probably vanish before they start really talking to each other though. Are Heero and Quatre all right? Are either of them in trouble?"_

I got the impression Wufei was frowning as he replied. _"Nothing worse than bruising for injuries. I suspect they are likely to receive service awards for foiling an assassination attempt on the Empress. How badly were you hurt?"_

Oops. _"Um…remember not to freak since you're in a public place?"_

"_Duo…"_

"_The good news is, I got Zechs and managed to make it permanent. The bad news is, he got me too. The other good news is, he didn't manage to make it permanent and Heero can revivify people."_

"_Duo!"_

"_I'm okay! I just hurt like hell. Trowa says I'm in Heero's room. It's boring, so he's probably right."_

"_Are you safe you move?"_

"_Yeah, it just hurts, like I said. You thinking we need to bug out?"_

"_Sooner would be better."_

I hesitated for a moment. I wanted to at least thank Heero before I left, but if we stuck around Bad Things could happen. _"Do you know where Heero and Quatre are now?"_

"_Not specifically, but I suspect they will be stuck in debriefings and political red tape for at least several more hours."_

"_Okay. Get someplace you can teleport and I'll meet you back at the office in a few minutes."_

"_Be careful."_

"_Hey! All I'm going to do is teleport, and it's not like that's hard!" _I did the mental equivalent of blowing a raspberry and dropped the connection.

I looked back over at Trowa, who was calmly studying the ceiling. "I talked with Wufei; he got out fine. Heero and Quatre are probably going to be tied up for a while yet, so we're going to vanish before we cause more trouble."

Trowa tilted his head back down and fixed me with his visible eye. "I'm going to stay here."

"Thought you would." Given Hawks and their curiosity, there was basically no chance Trowa would leave before he found out exactly what the final verdict on all of today's shenanigans was. Given that it was Trowa, he probably also wanted stick around in case he needed to back Heero or Quatre in any sort of official capacity. "Tell Heero I'll get in touch with him, okay?" Trowa nodded. "Okay, next fun part." I carefully slid my legs off the side of the bed and moved into a sitting up without leaning on things position. Staying still for a little while had helped, but not that much. I bit my lip. Healing can only do so much before the body needs to take over on its own.

I'd told Wufei I'd meet him at the office, and I had to land my teleport outside the building. So I had to be standing. I leaned heavily on the headboard of the bed as I tried for vertical and glared at Trowa when it looked like he'd try to help. He stopped.

I made it up and the entire left side of my body screamed at me. I decided that next time I got killed, I would try to keep my injuries more symmetric. It would probably hurt less.

Pure stubbornness kept me up and I managed a grin at Trowa. "I'll see you later, 'kay?" I visualized the road outside my office and teleported myself as close to the building as I could. I refused to fall over as I landed. I swayed a bit, stayed up, and managed to walk up to the door, open it, and get inside. I then realized that there were stairs between me and my office, said fuck it, and sat on the florist's counter. She scowled at me. "Did Wufei come by?" I asked through gritted teeth.

"Not yet."

"Oh good. I'll just be here until he arrives. Don't mind me."

About a minute later, Wufei walked in the door, looked at me, realized why I was sitting where I was, and promptly came over and gave me a shoulder to lean on. "Stairs, not so much," I said.

He rolled his eyes. "Go home. Find a sorceress who can do minor healing spells to patch you up some more. I'll make sure nothing blows up before at least tomorrow."

"The sorceress is already on her way," the flowershop owner interjected.

I blinked at her. "Uh, thanks," I said.

She rolled her eyes and muttered, "Men!" in an exasperated tone.

I sighed. "This was not my best idea," I admitted.

"No, obviously not," Wufei said.

Fortunately, the sorceress arrived then so I didn't have to come up with a witty rejoinder. She did a quick laying-on of hands and I felt better already. I'd always wished I knew some healing spells, but the one time I'd tried to learn a few I'd found I had no aptitude for them at all. And I hadn't actually bothered to try to learn how to revivify somebody, since usually the body needing revivifying was someone I'd killed, so I probably didn't want to bring them back. Or was me, in which case I couldn't help anyway.

I still ached, but the full-on throbbing and fogging vision was gone. I sighed in relief and pulled away from Wufei to sit up on my own. "'Fei, can you," I started.

"Yes. Go home." He glared at me and then turned and gestured to the sorceress. "Thank you, and if you will follow me, we can settle the accounts."

I tuned them out as they headed farther back in the store and gingerly got down off the counter. My legs held, so I managed to walk outside on my own power and, once I was far enough away, reach for the Orb. I paused for a second just holding on to the connection and considered. I was hungry, and I was tired. There was nothing in my cabinets that was edible, so tired got the winning vote for the moment.

I visualized my bedroom and pulled. When the room blurred into view, I took the two steps forward to the bed, and just let myself fall. Fuck removing clothing, it was too much work. I tugged the sheets until I was covered and then went ahead and passed out.


	14. Chapter 14

A/N: TGIF. I just had not quite the week from hell, but definitely the week from purgatory. Oof. Anyway, as much fun as it is to make everyone chuckle, this story is winding down; anyone paying attention back at the beginning (either in chapter 1 or 2, I think) would have noticed I said it has 17 chapters total. This one has a tad more politicking and some sorcery I invented that I'm actually rather proud of. Also the usual smart-ass remarks. I like those. Enjoy, and drop me a line.

Disclaimer: not my characters, world, or quote. It is my spell though, and I like it.

Chapter 14

"Your job is to find better ideas, mine is to cut holes in the ones you have…"

Steven Brust's _Iorich_ pg. 235

Unfortunately, one of the problems with going to bed fully clothed is that you then wake up fully clothed. And that just feels gross. It felt even more gross than usual since I was covered in dried blood and sweat too. That particular outfit was totally shot, especially the white bits.

Step one of the day: shower, get clean clothing, change the bedsheets. Step two of getting some food was severely delayed when I rediscovered the fact that I had no food in the apartment; sleeping had kind of knocked that revelation out of my head. The bread and cheese I'd run off with the afternoon before I'd gotten myself killed had been the last of it.

Muttering curses, I left the apartment and wandered down the street to a stand where I could buy some fresh pastries with meat baked inside them. I ate more than I usually would have; my body was burning extra calories as the spells worked on me yesterday continued to fix up bits of me that were broken. The good news was, I felt much better than I had yesterday. The bad news was, I still ached. A lot.

Breakfast finished, I teleported to the office and this time actually made it up the stairs. The entire time, the flowershop owner continued muttering about men and rampant stupidity. It made me snicker. As a result, I walked into Wufei's office grinning a bit.

"You're feeling better," Wufei remarked, looking up from his paperwork.

"Oddly enough, a good night's sleep tends to do that." I sat on the extra chair since I didn't feel like standing for extended periods of time was a good plan. And I'd made it up the stairs so I needed a rest break. "What's the word on the street? And in the palace?"

"It's only been one day. This may not be representative." Wufei sat back and stared at the wall. "But so far nothing has gotten out of control. I'll start with the palace, because that is the more relevant set of news. Heero's story of contracted outside help and assurances that this is the end of the problem seem to have carried enough weight to stop any sort of group action before it started."

I leaned back against my chair. "I think you spent too much time talking to the diplomat, 'Fei."

He ignored me. "Basically, there are no signs that any of the other houses are going to attack the Jhereg. They seem to be viewing the assassination attempt as someone's personal grudge that has now been taken care of." Wufei almost quirked a smile, which immediately made me suspicious. "Were you aware that Quatre is the Issola heir?"

"Wait, _what_?" I sat bold upright, winced, and settled back. "Are you saying we just conspired to foil an assassination attempt with the next Issola emperor?" I shook my head. "I don't think I have the words."

Wufei snorted. "Mark down the date." I flipped him off. "Anyway, Quatre's involvement also helped stop any panic before it started, especially with the nobles."

I rubbed at my face with my hand. "So basically, Heero shut the guard up and Quatre shut the nobles up and now everybody's happy."

"Basically, yes."

"Oh good. So what's the street situation?"

Wufei shuffled some papers. I still haven't figure out if he's looking for notes he wrote when he does that, or if he just likes to shuffle papers. "Zechs was discovered with a dagger through his head in a warehouse early this morning. Apparently someone anonymously tipped off the local constables so they would investigate."

Not me, which meant it was Wufei. I nodded. Having killed the man would send a message to his employer, and the message was useless if no one found the body. It would send a message to my employer too. Hopefully that one wouldn't be 'Hire me again!' and would be closer to 'I'm done, so fuck off!'. Either way, the body being found was good for business.

"Some version of events has trickled down onto the street," Wufei continued. "No one has quite put all the pieces together yet, but there are rumors that Zechs was killed by an assassination attempt that went south and separate rumors that someone attacked the Empress." He almost-shrugged. "If the full story is not officially out soon, the rumors will get close enough and it won't matter."

"General feeling about Zechs being dead? Are we looking at a war starting from this direction and not the other?"

"To put it simply, no one cares. I spent some time in Howard's bar listening to the gossip−"

"Mark down the date."

"Shut up, Duo. The general reaction seems to be to shrug it off. Looking at the attempt on the Empress, I overheard one man say that anyone who tries to kill the Empress is, and I quote, 'messed up in the head,' end quote. Even when people fully connect the dots, I believe they'll just shake their heads and say Zechs had it coming."

"Well that makes my life easier. This may have all worked out."

"Not quite yet. The employer is still unaccounted for, unless Trowa did manage to get the location." Wufei rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "I'd rather not have this whole mess happen all over again, if possible."

I grinned. "Aren't you glad now I brought Trowa in on this at the beginning?"

"No," he said with a straight face.

I made a face at him. "You're no fun. Actually, that one's complicated. Yes, Trowa got the location. But it was that warehouse where I ended up fighting Zechs."

"So we're back at square one because you didn't wait for backup." Wufei glared at me.

I put my hands up defensively. "No, we are not. And you would have taken off after him too if you could have. I didn't know in advance that anyone besides Zechs would be at the warehouse, okay?" I waited to see if an argument was going to happen.

Apparently, Wufei decided to let it go. "So why aren't we back at square one?"

"Because I actually did see the boss before I ended up fighting for my life, and I threw a tracker at him."

"Did it take?" Wufei looked ready to forgive me for taking off on my own if my spell had worked.

"I think so. I won't know for sure until I activate it; I asked Trowa if he would help since he's probably more likely to get it on the first try. I threw one of mine at him because I figured he'd catch anything else." That spell was one of the reasons I had the rep I did for pulling off impossible jobs. A while ago I'd needed to track someone who was expert at getting rid of tracer spells. So instead of trying to use the usual spells, I made up a new one by working backwards.

Instead of sticking a beacon on the target and following the mental signal, I stuck an almost invisible spell on the target that worked like a lodestone and put the beacon on something else. The closer the beacon got to the 'label' on the target, the stronger its signal got. It had taken me a few tries to get the beacon side to work right last time, though, and I needed it to work the first time now since there was no chance of re-sticking the lodestone side on if I accidentally screwed it up.

Searching that way took longer since it was something like playing 'hot-cold' with sorcery, but no one can remove a spell they don't know to look for. And I kept that one quiet. Until now, at least.

"What are you going to do when you find him?" Wufei asked.

I smirked. "I'm not going to."

"Come again?"

"My contract was to take out Zechs. I did that. My part in this is over. The only reason I tagged the boss at all is because I'd rather not have a repeat of the nice, friendly blackmail that got us into this. I'm not going to track the boss. I'm going to hand the locator to the council and make them do it."

"And they are not going to kill you because…?"

"Because I talked to Trowa. The boss's name is Treize. Ring a bell?" It hadn't clicked with me until this morning; being dead messes with your thought processes some.

Wufei frowned a bit, thinking. "High level Jhereg, some part of that mess last year on the north side of the city." I could tell when he figured it out. "Suspected of being on the Jhereg council."

"Yup. I'm betting that one's true. Or was true. I don't know who pissed who off or how and I don't think I care. But I'm betting there was a falling out, possibly involving personal violence. Treize's version of retribution is leveling the entire house. The rest of the council tries to keep it quiet because they don't want anyone to know that a council member actually managed to leave the council with his life intact. So they hire me without telling me either who is behind the assassination attempts or that the goal of the attempts isn't actually to kill the Empress."

Wufei looked skeptical. "A plausible theory, I suppose. But why would a former council member attempt to destroy the house? I believe it would make more sense to vanish."

I shrugged. "It might have something to do with whatever the argument was in the first place. It also just might be that Treize realizes he can't get out of this alive anyway so he just wants to take everyone else with him. If there actually was a war, the first people targeted on the Jhereg side would be the council. Maybe he can't leave. Maybe he's off his rocker; he is trying to start a war."

"And any of those are possible, as are a dozen things you haven't mentioned. Are you willing to bet your life on your conclusions?"

"Of course. I'm stupid that way." Wufei looked like he wanted to bang his head on his desk. "If it makes you feel better, I'm nearly dead sure about most of it. The only things I'm not sure about are what caused the council argument, and why Treize decided to hire assassins rather than skip town. And I don't think either of those matters. Actually…" I chewed on my bottom lip for a second. "It may be better if I don't know. That way the council can't decide I'm a security threat."

Wufei eyed me and apparently decided I was going to win the stubborn contest again. "How much back up do you think we can get away with this time? And when will you contact Trowa? If you are going to get me killed, I'd rather do it sooner than later."

I almost argued about his coming along, got glared at, and gave it up as a bad job. "If you come, please stay out of sight."

"I'm not you."

"Fair point. Um. I can pick the place, so how about the Black Log? Should be easy to get some backup in there and I know where all the exits are." This time the meeting would be in my territory. "I'll contact Trowa now. If he's free, I'll ask him to do the spell now and the meeting can be around noon."

Wufei shook his head. "I'll get the enforcement in place."

"Do me a favor and do it from the office this time? Finding you in an alley again is not on my list of fun things to have happen."

"Doable. Now go away."

"Fine, fine."


	15. Chapter 15

A/N: So my day actually started out pretty good, but then it blew up in my face. In the most frustrating way possible. So I'm getting this out as a way to feel better. In regards to this chapter, why is it that Wufei always gets my favorite lines? I'm writing from Duo's POV, for cryin' out loud! My brain works in mysterious ways. Points to anyone who guesses which line I like best. Also, to all the people wondering when Duo and Heero actually end up back in the same room at the same time: give it a bit. Please drop me a review and help my day suck less.

Disclaimer: not my characters, world, or quote.

Chapter 15

"'You don't have a plan?'"

Steven Brust's _Issola_ pg. 167

I went to my office so Wufei could do his calling around in the other room. Getting backup into the Black Log would be a piece of cake since I had part ownership in the place due to bad gambling on the other owner's part; as far as I knew, he _still_ hadn't figured out that the only way to win at s'yang stones is to not play. Him owing me made my life easier though, so I had no intentions of telling him, myself.

I plonked down in my swivel chair and stuck my feet up on the desk, then promptly yanked them down again when that made my side hurt more. I hate being injured, even if the actual injuries are gone.

Getting as comfortable as possible, I called Trowa. This was beginning to be a habit.

"_Hello, Duo. Are you all right?"_

"_Yeah, just a bit sore. Got a sorceress to do a bit more healing and that helped. Are you part of the song and dance going on over there or did you manage to escape notoriety completely?"_

"_I escaped completely."_

"_That isn't fair," _I whined.

"_You shouldn't be complaining either. Wufei is the one who had the most trouble avoiding notice. You were disguised well enough no one should be able to pick you out."_

"_It's that 'should' that worries me, but I can deal with it." _I shrugged a bit, even though I knew Trowa couldn't see me. _"Do you have time now to do that locator thing I asked you about before?"_

"_Yes. Where do you want to meet?"_

"_Just teleport to the street outside my office and come on up. Working from here'll be easiest."_

"_All right. Who are we locating, by the way?"_

"_Treize. I stuck a spell on him when I saw him at the warehouse; nearly got killed, but we should be able to find him now."_

"Dammit, Duo!" Wufei yelled from his office.

I trotted over and opened the door. "Sorry," I said with a grin. "Would you rather I'd taken the teleport block down so Trowa could teleport straight in?"

"No, but some warning would have been nice." Wufei put the dagger he'd automatically drawn back in the drawer he'd pulled it from. I beckoned Trowa into my office.

"Come on, Wufei's grumpy."

"Also, armed," Wufei said warningly.

"Oddly enough, so am I," I shot back as I shut the door behind Trowa.

Trowa just shook his head. "What exactly am I finding?"

"It's kind of a reverse tracker spell. There's a marker on Treize, light enough he shouldn't notice, that I need to connect with something else that'll register when he gets close."

"Something else?"

"Doesn't really matter what. This'll work." I grabbed a paperweight off my desk. It wasn't like it was holding anything down. "I'd do it myself, but it took me three tries to get it right last time and I've only got one this time since I can't just go stick another tracer on him if I fuck up."

Trowa took the paperweight and turned it over in his hands. "How do you want for it to register when he's close?"

I leaned on the desk. "Last time I used a piece of string that pulled towards the guy the closer I got to him. With that…" It was a clear lump of glass. "I dunno, can you make it cloudy and then have it get clearer as it gets closer?"

"That should work. Link me to the marker."

I closed my eyes and felt for the tag I'd left. It took a minute, and it was kind of like a small dot of light really far away. I couldn't get a direction or location off the pinprick, it was just _there_, which was why it needed to be linked to something else. Then I reached out mentally, still holding that dot of light, and connected with Trowa. He picked up the dot from me, and I heard him humming lightly in my head.

Once he had it, I pulled out of the connection and let him work. I watched the paperweight since watching Trowa was like watching a statue right now. It slowly filled with fog. When the entire half-circle shape was covered, Trowa blinked and came back to reality. "Here." He handed me the paperweight. "It will clear as it gets closer to the marker."

"Thanks," I said. I tucked it in my pocket.

"Are you going after him?" Trowa asked curiously.

"No. I'm letting someone else do it." I considered for a second. "I'm having a lunch meeting with my employer. Want to come lurk again?"

"Will it be as entertaining as last time?" He raised an eyebrow at me.

I snorted. "I hope not."

Trowa shrugged. "I'll come. Where and when?"

"I haven't actually set it up yet, but…the Black Log, at noon. The Black Log is one street over and slightly north of here." I gestured in the right direction. "It's the restaurant where it looks like the sign lost a fight with a torch."

"Should be easy to find. I'll be there."

"'Kay. Thanks for your help."

"I believe you're up to twenty-five favors."

"Trowa!" I swatted at him and he walked out the door in a smug way. I have no idea how he managed to walk smugly, but he did.

Next trick was to officially set up the meeting. I stuck my head out of my office and said, "Noon, officially," to Wufei. Which pretty much ended my part in the process.

Wufei broke off his enforcer juggling long enough to call someone in to play messenger. Ten-odd minutes later, a gangly guy with unwashed hair and clothes that were too loose walked over to Wufei's desk and said, "Yeah?"

Wufei instructed him to go invite Marevin to a lunch meeting at noon at the Black Log with me and then booted him back out.

"I hope whatever was wrong with him wasn't catching," I remarked.

"It's stupidity, which is a disease you unfortunately already have."

"And yet, you agreed to work for me. What does that say about you?"

Wufei smiled peacefully. "That I am quietly plotting your downfall."

"Uh huh. I am so scared." I rolled my eyes. "So why send intelligence-challenged over there to talk to Marevin?"

"He is in no way a threat. He has a better chance of walking out alive than any of the competent fighters on the payroll."

"Okay, that's a good reason."

"I also thought he might annoy Marevin."

"And that's a better one. I must be getting to you."

"I hope not. Did Trowa make the locator spell work?"

"Yup." I pulled out the paperweight and showed it off. "One hot-cold Treize-finding device, all ready to hand off to the idiots who started this mess."

Wufei watched me for a second. "Do you actually trust them to end it?"

"Given the opportunity…yeah." I dropped the glass back into my pocket and fiddled with my braid. "They wouldn't be running things if they were incompetent. They won't let the opportunity pass."

"What makes you think they will not hire you to take out Treize?"

I grinned. "One, they owe me. Two, given how much they paid me to take out Zechs, I don't think they'd want to deal with the increase in cost they'd have to put up with for me to take out a former council member."

"And now that you are no longer spending all your free time making sure the Empress is safe, what are you going to do with your new-found wealth?"

"I have no idea?"

"You haven't even thought about it, have you?"

"Nope." I shook my head. "It's not like I took this job for the money. Heck, I didn't even negotiate the salary. You know, I wonder if that sixty thousand was someone's way of soothing a guilty conscience for screwing me over."

"Do you honestly think anyone on the council has a conscience?"

"Uh…good point. Maybe they're just trying to make sure I don't kill any of them for this."

"Probably."

Silence reigned for a minute and Wufei pulled whatever paper he had been looking at back towards him. I checked the time. "I have _got_ to stop scheduling meetings for several hours later when I have nothing to do between now and then. I have four and a half hours to kill now."

"Go bother your businesses again like you did last time."

"Is that safe right now?"

"Does it matter?"

"Are we playing the question game?"

"No. Go do something useful."

"Yeah, yeah." I straightened up from leaning against the wall. "If I get killed, I blame you."

"If you get killed, I will ask Trowa to ask Heero to bring you back again. I will also ask him if it would be possible to put a silencing spell on you at the same time." Wufei glared over his paperwork.

"Going!" I bowed to the inevitable, literally, which made Wufei mime throwing something at my head, and ducked out the door.

I hummed on my way down the stairs. This afternoon should tie up the last bit of this disaster job, and then I was free to go back to taking jobs I actually wanted to take. Murder and mayhem, back on my terms. Life was good.

There were a fair amount of people on the street, either working or shopping probably. I dodged a woman hurrying by carrying a half-full basket and headed down the block. I figured I'd go say hi to Howard and then work my way around the area again like I had before. If I rigged my route correctly, I could end up at the street the Black Log was on last and just go straight there.

Wufei might kill me for not warning him, but there really wasn't any point to going back to the office before heading right back out again. And walking the neighborhood was his idea anyway. He could live with it.

I'd be annoyed that he was kicking me out, but walking off energy is always a good plan. And besides, looking over businesses is a great excuse to drink alcohol for free at any of the bars I went through. At least the ones with good alcohol. I'd take a pass on the bad stuff.


	16. Chapter 16

A/N: Second to last chapter! From the last one, snowdragonct gets points for figuring out which quote I like best, and Cuzosu gets them too for being in the right conversation even if not quite the correct line. :) Figured I'd post this now since I had a free minute and this weekend is looking busy, even from three days out. Ah, another note about last chapter that I'd forgotten to put in then: Dragaeran days are 30 hours long. I mentioned this at one point, but it confused the hell out of my beta when I declared it four and half hours before noon. Her response: "Why the hell is everyone awake at 7:30am?" Mine: "It's not 7:30, it's 10:30!" "...Wait, what?" 'Twas an interesting conversation. Anyway, enjoy chapter 16, drop me a line.

Disclaimer: not my characters, not my world, not my quote.

Chapter 16

"That isn't justice; that's the law."

Steven Brust's _Iorich_ pg. 107

I walked into the Black Log at fifteen 'til the hour and grabbed myself a table with chairs near a wall. Again, I faced the door; politeness had gone out the window a long, long time ago. I recognized most of the staff I could see in the room as people I'd had work for me before.

A figure I was pretty sure was Wufei was sitting near the other wall with his hood up, sipping klava. Per usual, Trowa was invisible. I probably should've asked him at some point whether he was always messing with people's heads to make them not see him or if he was just that sneaky, but I wasn't sure I wanted the answer.

At five minutes until the hour Marevin walked in with his two bodyguards. As far as I could tell, it was exactly the same two guys as last time. I wondered if he paid them by the hour, by the job, or just had them on retainer. Then I decided I didn't care.

Marevin sat down, the bodyguards stood within looming distance, and a waiter I recognized as usually one of my button men (read as: 'enforcer') came over to take our order. Since the food here did not suck and I was hungry, I ordered the sausage with Eastern red pepper and a nice white wine to go with it. Marevin simply ordered a glass of red wine, which meant he wasn't intending to stay beyond whatever talk we were about to have.

Suited me just fine.

We waited to talk until the waiter came back to set the wine glasses on the table, bowed, and walked away again. He wasn't a bad waiter for someone drafted several hours earlier. Made me wonder if he'd done this kind of protection gig before.

"Well?" Marevin twirled his wine glass.

"The job you hired me for is done," I said, watching my wine and not him.

"I heard."

"In the course of carrying out my job, I learned some interesting things." I glanced up at him. This bit was kind of dangerous. He wouldn't have hired me if he didn't think I could keep my mouth shut, but there was always a risk he'd decide that dead men were even less of a security risk than close-lipped ones.

"What kind of things?" Wary, but not pissed off yet.

"That there might be someone else you're looking for, beyond Zechs."

Marevin started to say something and then stopped as the waiter came back with my food. I let it sit for the moment and simply nodded to the waiter so he would leave again. I set my wine glass down above the plate. "If you are looking for this other person," I continued, "I might have a way to find him."

"Would you happen to know why I would like to find this person?"

I looked straight at him this time. "No, and I don't want to."

He almost smiled a bit. It was creepy. "How do I know it is the right person then?"

"Tall, reddish hair, likes to hire other people to do his dirty work. Want a name?"

"No, that's quite enough." He seemed startled I had that much of a description. "It seems you have something of interest to me. What would the information cost me?" He raised an aristocratic eyebrow. I stifled a sneer.

His response was a bit fortunate. I'd been a bit worried he'd just threaten me and then I'd have to threaten back and things could get ugly with the whole drawn weapons thing, which would be bad. And I even already had an answer for him too. "Leave me alone." I crossed my hands in front of me on the table, putting the daggers at my wrists in easy reach if I needed them. "If the council wants a pet assassin some other time, find someone else. Don't mess with me, don't mess with my people, don't mess with my area. Leave me _out_ of your politics."

Marevin sipped his wine. "That could be arranged," he said.

"Guarantee it or no deal," I warned.

"Why should I? Can you guarantee the usefulness of your information?"

Time to put some cards on the table. Or rather, some lumps of glass. I carefully reached into my pocket and slowly drew out the paperweight. The bodyguards tensed, but didn't actually do anything since I made no sudden movements. They relaxed a bit when they realized what I pulled out wasn't a weapon.

I set the paperweight on the table and pushed it across to Marevin. He gestured at the bodyguard at his left, who came forward and did some kind of scan, then shook his head and backed up again. Marevin picked up the paperweight, examined it, and eventually asked, "What does it do?"

"It's a kind of reverse tracking spell." I sighed mentally; I hated telling someone like Marevin about the spell set, but I couldn't really avoid it. At least if he ever wanted to use it, he'd have to figure out on his own how to get it to work. "The closer you get to the person you're looking for, the clearer the glass will get. It isn't exact, because any large spell would tip that person off, but it should give you an idea and a way to circle in on his location."

"Will it work to find anyone?"

I wondered if there was even a way to do that. Probably not. "No. It's tied to a slight marker on the target. The closer the spell in the glass gets to that marker, the less fog there is on the inside."

He nodded. "As you said, inexact, but useful. All right. We have a deal. One more question. Will the marker or the spell on the glass fade?" He tapped the weight.

"Probably. I don't know the exact duration. It should hold for at least a week. I haven't exactly experimented." I shrugged a bit. If they couldn't find Treize within a week with that spell, extra time wouldn't help.

Marevin fiddled with the paperweight and then raised his glass to take another drink of wine. "You have asked that we not come to you for any more jobs. However, your work in this case was quite satisfactory. Would you be averse to politely worded job offers in the future?"

I was still annoyed with this guy, so I decided to be blunt. "Does that mean if you tried to hire me again, you wouldn't threaten me so I couldn't say no?"

"I suppose that might be one way of looking at it."

I stared at him. I trusted him about as far as I could throw him. And given how much taller he was than me, and the fact that his bodyguards would interfere if I tried, that was basically no distance at all. "No," I said. "No job offers at all. I'll stick with safer employers, thanks all the same."

He didn't seem too troubled by my refusal. I supposed the council could hire whoever it wanted. They could possibly even find Mario if they needed to. Losing me shouldn't inconvenience them at all. Of course, it still hurt my ego. But then I told my ego to shut up and go talk to my self-preservation. "No job offers. No further interaction." Marevin nodded. "A pleasure doing business with you, Duo."

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and instead raised my wine glass slightly to him. I couldn't honestly agree with the sentiment, so I decided staying quiet was safer.

I took a sip of my wine. Marevin drained his and stood, tucking the spelled paperweight into his pocket. I stood as well to be polite, and then he turned and walked out with the bodyguards not turning to follow until he came even with them. I sat back down and watched their backs as they left. "And thank the gods," I muttered under my breath.

I picked up a knife and fork and started in on my lunch. The figure in the corner turned out to actually be Wufei, as he pulled down his hood and walked over to join me. I chewed and swallowed. "It worked," I said. "And my price for handing off that spell was for them to go away and not come back."

"Do you think they'll actually hold to that?" Wufei asked as he sat down.

I shrugged. "For a little while at least. Eventually, they'll probably decide I'm useful again and come harass me to do more of their dirty work. But for the next few decades or so I think I'm safe."

"Good for you," Trowa said, making me jump. I glared at him as he stole a chair from the next table over and pulled it up to the side of our table.

"How do you do that, anyway?" I asked.

He just looked smug.

The waiter came back and Wufei and Trowa both ordered lunch. When he wandered off again, I asked, "So, why is it that things go right when I actually do have backup?"

Trowa shrugged. "The gods think you're interesting," was Wufei's contribution.

I made a face at him and then ate more food. It was quiet for a bit. The rest of the food came. "Heero wants to know when to expect you," Trowa said out of nowhere.

I blinked at him and swallowed what I was chewing. "Uh, clarify?"

"You said you were going to talk with him. He wants to know when."

"Out of curiosity, were you attempting to ask that when my mouth was full on purpose?"

"Maybe." I swear he was smirking. I gave him a cross between a dirty look and a glare. "Heero's scarier," was the response.

I gave up. At least Wufei was staying out of it. "Probably tomorrow. I figured I should give him at least some of a rundown of my end. When is he off-duty?" Wufei looked disapproving. I ignored him.

"The same time in the evening as before. I'm not sure they ever change the guard shifts," Trowa remarked.

"I actually asked about that," I said. "Apparently they don't, since they've been set since who knows when. Massive security risk there. About the only thing that might ever change is which guard is connected to which shift."

"Idiots," Wufei remarked.

"Idiots who made my job easier," I reminded him.

"And Zechs'."

"Didn't actually matter in the end."

"Fair enough."

From there we went back to eating. It was a pretty good lunch. I tipped the waiter pretty well, since he wasn't horrible. Trowa went back to doing whatever it is Trowa does; I've never actually figured that one out. Wufei dragged me back to the office to do the bits of paperwork I actually had to do personally, which took up most of the rest of the day.

Damn paperwork.


	17. Chapter 17

A/N: Tah dah! Welcome to the last chapter. I hadn't actually intended for it to go this way, but then I started typing and Duo and Heero hijacked my muse. So, massive sap warning (which should make the people who've been asking about Heero and Duo happy) which I'm kind of bad at, so let me know how I did (I made my beta go "awwww!" so it can't be that bad). And let me know how the whole story went over; I know the pacing was kinda weird, but what else? Liked it, hated it, finished it and have nothing to say, hit the nice review button and tell me. Also, I feel like this wants a sequel, but I have reservations. Opinions? Thanks for sticking around this long and reading my harebrained idea, and enjoy!

Disclaimer: not my characters, not my world, not my quote.

Chapter 17

"'So, what do we do?'"

Steven Brust's _Issola_ pg 156

When I went back to the palace after dark, just for fun I snuck in over the roof again. I didn't need to since a) I actually had a legitimate (well, sort of) reason to be in the palace and b) security was down to normal again so I could have just snuck through the hallways.

But I felt like it, so I took the roof road. It was less annoying when it was my choice and not something I had to do for a job that I'd never wanted in the first place.

And doesn't that just say something about me?

I roof-walked my way over to the guards' wing, carefully made sure there was no one loitering around who might see me, and climbed down the building to the ground. I noted that whoever had designed this wing wasn't the same person who'd done a lot of the other ones; there was no pointy scrollwork on anything, it was pretty much all utilitarian ironwork, and thank the gods for that. Pointy scrollwork should be outlawed.

I headed for a side door, suddenly realized I didn't know what the outside of Heero's room looked like, and did some mental cursing. I debated for a minute. I could teleport directly into Heero's room since I did know what the inside looked like, or I could go try to find him. Problem one: his room could have an alarm on it to warn if someone teleported in. Problem two: finding one person walking through the palace would be the next thing to impossible. The layout in there generally made absolutely no sense at all, and I usually navigated by way of general direction and not shortest distance between two points.

I decided to go with option one since I was pretty sure nothing had gone 'clang' or 'bing' when I'd teleported out of the room the other day, and I wasn't sure my pride was up to asking directions if I got lost in the palace. Mental map of the outside, excellent. Mental map of the inside, needed some work.

I reached for the Orb and teleported into the room. Nothing went off in a noisy way, so I let out the breath I'd been holding. Then I looked around. The room was still boring.

A quick time-check showed that Heero should have gotten off shift about two minutes ago. There was a pretty good chance he'd go get food before coming back to his room, so I was likely to have a bit of a wait.

I grabbed the chair, pulled it the three feet over to the bookshelf, sat on it backwards, and started to poke around. _Book on war, book on war, book on politics and that's probably Quatre's fault, book on fighting styles, ooh, book on sorcery._ I pulled that one out and started flipping through it.

Like most books of its kind, it started out with the basics like lighting a candle and worked up from there. The author had some pretty funny takes on why and how exactly teleportation worked and I was snickering quietly when the door opened.

Heero blinked a bit in startlement when he saw me and then closed the door behind him. "Hey Heero, did you know that this guy thinks that while you're teleporting between places, you don't exist for about a second?" I grinned over at him. "That might actually be the dumbest theory I've ever heard."

"You don't agree?" He walked over to the bed and sat on it.

"Nope. If I'm the one doing the teleport and I suddenly don't exist, then there's nothing to make me exist again since there's no longer anyone controlling the spell." I closed the book and put it back on the shelf. "I've heard other theories. That teleporting moves you through another dimension for example, and I think that one's at least possible, but I more buy into the idea that for a split second you're just in two places at once. I think that makes the most sense." I turned around in the chair so I was facing Heero and felt a bit awkward. "Sorry about coming in uninvited, but I didn't think I'd be able to find you just wandering around unless you decided to walk out into a garden again."

"I did, actually. Trowa told me to expect you and I wasn't sure where you would be."

"Oh, sorry." Now I felt slightly more awkward.

Heero shrugged a bit. "This works too." He reached up to tug on the strap holding his sword in place and my eyes followed the motion. His hands were well defined, I noticed, probably from all that sword work for the guard; long fingers and an almost graceful movement.

I blinked and looked back to his face and started fidgeting with the end of my braid a bit. "I wanted to ask you, you aren't in any trouble are you? I mean, you're still on duty so it couldn't be that bad, but after the attack the other day and you having to cover for Wufei and me−" I shut up when Heero reached forward and placed a finger over my lips.

"I am fine. Slightly annoyed, since I am now getting starry-eyed looks from Relena, but fine." Heero sat back again. I stayed shut up. "Neither you nor Wufei was in Jhereg colors, so the official policy seems to be don't ask, don't tell. They don't want to know. My report simply included 'outside help'."

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. "Thank you."

"Are you in trouble?" Heero asked me. He was staring straight at me and I noticed again exactly how blue his eyes were.

I fidgeted with my braid some more. "No. As far as I can tell, my employer never caught on to the extra help. If he did, he's keeping quiet about it. And he kind of owes me now so I'm safe for the next while." I ran a hand through my bangs. "I never got a chance to talk with you after the big…not sure what to call it. 'Showdown' just seems campy." I raised and dropped a shoulder. "Since shit went down, anyway. You know I got Zechs, but I managed to tag the employer too." Heero looked confused, so I clarified. "Not with a weapon, with a spell so I could find him. Then I passed the locator off to the person who hired me. That'll take care of the problem."

"Are you certain?"

"Yeah. There's a reckoning there, even if I don't know why. That should be the last of this, since the plot to start a war didn't work. Uh…it didn't work, did it? Wufei said it was staying quiet, but you'd have a better perspective." I ducked my head and looked up at Heero through my bangs.

"It didn't work. When the fighting was over, Quatre politely calmed down the most angry people, congratulated all the guards present on stopping the threat, and lamented about how one disgruntled citizen can impact so many lives." He smirked.

I stared. "You are kidding."

"No. It also distracted everyone long enough for Wufei to slip out."

I opened my mouth, shut it, opened it again, decided I didn't want to continue looking like a fish, and said, "I hope he never uses his powers for evil," as sincerely as I could manage. Heero turned a laugh into a cough. I felt accomplished.

I also felt somewhat nervous due to all the butterflies that had decided to take up residence in my stomach as soon as Heero had walked into the room. I'd been ignoring them, but instead of going away they seemed to be multiplying. I looked down again and flipped the tail of my braid back and forth. "Ah, Heero…I didn't get a chance to say this before because of everything going on and I was unconscious and…" I forced myself to look up at Heero's eyes. "Thank you. For bringing me back. I really didn't think I was going to make it that time." I looked away again. "Would have been ironic and all, killed on a backwards job that I didn't want. But you didn't have to and−"

This time I got shut up when Heero leaned forward, tilted my head up, and kissed me. "Yes I did," he murmured as he pulled back.

"I…" I know I looked like someone had hit me in the head with a board. "Okay." And I leaned forward and kissed him back.

When we broke this time, we both kind of gazed at each other, at a loss for what to do now. I swallowed. "I'm an assassin," I said.

"And I'm a guardsman," Heero said.

"Can this work? All I know about you is how dedicated you are to your job and that apparently you like books on battles, sorcery, and possibly politics."

"That last is Quatre's fault; I haven't actually read it."

"I'd figured." I quirked half a grin at being proved right. "But your job and my job, not so compatible. Technically, you should be arresting me right now." I was back to fidgeting with my braid.

Heero reached out and laid his hand on top of mine to stop me. "Maybe. But I don't want to. And you did help save pieces of the Empire. Assassin or not, you're someone I'd like to get to know."

I looked at the hand holding mine. And then I looked at the man attached to it. The very attractive, dedicated, man-who'd-bothered-to-save-my-life attached to it. I flipped my hand over and laced my fingers with his. "And you didn't arrest me and you saved my life. I'm in." I smiled at him. "You're going to start having to take some time off work, though. This really late in the evening stuff could get old really fast." The last evening meeting I'd had with Heero flashed through my mind. "Did you eat before coming over here?"

Heero almost looked sheepish.

"I'll take that as a no. C'mon." I tugged him to standing. "I know a few good restaurants. Also a bar where the owner tells bad jokes."

Heero followed as I headed for the door. "If he tells any that start with 'an assassin and a guardsman walk into a bar' I am not responsible for my actions," he warned.

"In that case…" I let go of his hand and tugged off his gold half-cloak and tossed it on the rack by the door. "There. You're off duty, and you do not have 'guardsman' stamped on your forehead. Now you just have to put up with 'a Jhereg and a Dragon walk into a bar' jokes."

He laced his hand in mine again. "I think I can live with those."


End file.
